DHAKA: Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan on Monday declared a ‘civil disobedience movement’ against the Nawaz Sharif-led government, saying ‘the country’s future is bleak under the rule of businessmen’, as cleric Tahirul Qadri gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the embattled prime minister to resign.

‘I have called for the civil disobedience movement for you, not for myself. We will not pay taxes, electricity or gas bills,’ Khan told his supporters while giving a speech which he described as the most important of his political career, reports NDTV.

‘I thought that if this rally heads towards the Prime Minister’s House then they will clash with the police,’ and they (the police) will get killed which ‘I don't want’, he said on the second day of his sit-in at Islamabad.

The PTI chief asserted that under the rule of ‘these businessmen who only want to make money for themselves, Pakistan's future is bleak’.

Khan’s remarks were directed at Sharif, one of the country’s wealthiest persons and the owner of Ittefaq Group.

‘There is only one way now, we will kick off a civil disobedience campaign,’ Khan said to raucous applause from thousands of his supporters, who have traveled from Lahore in his ‘Azadi March’ aimed at ousting prime minister Sharif, who won a landslide victory in the general election last year.

BDST: 1817 HRS, AUG 18, 2014