Imran Ahmad is a Pakistani politician and former cricketer who is the current chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and the candidate for the Prime Minister of Pakistan in the upcoming Pakistani general election, 2018. He was a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from 2013 to 2018, a seat he won in 2013 general elections. Prior to entering politics, Khan was a cricketer and philanthropist. He played international cricket for two decades and later developed philanthropy projects such as Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre and Namal College.
Khan tearing his nomination paper for National Assembly at a press conference, Khan boycotted his 2008 elections. In 1996, Khan founded a political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He ran for the seat of National Assembly of Pakistan in Pakistani general election, 1997 as a candidate of PTI from two constituencies - NA-53, Mianwali and NA-94, Lahore - but was unsuccessful and lost the both seats to candidates of PML (N).
Khan supported General Pervez Musharraf's military coup in 1999, believing Musharraf would "end corruption, clear out the political mafias". According to Khan, he was Musharraf's choice for prime minister in 2002 but turned down the offer. The 2002 Pakistani general election in October across 272 constituencies, Khan participated in the elections and was prepared to form a coalition if his party did not get a majority of the vote. He was elected from Mianwali. He has also served as a part of the Standing Committees on Kashmir and Public Accounts. On 6 May 2005, Khan was mentioned in The New Yorker as being the "most directly responsible" for drawing attention in the Muslim world to the Newsweek story about the alleged desecration of the Qur'an in a US military prison at the Guant�namo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. In June 2007, Khan faced political opponents in and outside the parliament.
On 2 October 2007, as part of the All Parties Democratic Movement, Khan joined 85 other MPs to resign from Parliament in protest of the presidential election scheduled for 6 October, which general Musharraf was contesting without resigning as army chief. On 3 November 2007, Khan was put under house arrest, after president Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. Later Khan escaped and went into hiding. He eventually came out of hiding on 14 November to join a student protest at the University of the Punjab. At the rally, Khan was captured by activists from the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami and roughly treated. He was imprisoned during the protest and was sent to the Dera Ghazi Khan jail in the Punjab province where he spent few days before becoming free.
On 30 October 2011, Khan addressed more than 100,000 supporters in Lahore, challenging the policies of the government, calling that new change a "tsunami" against the ruling parties, Another successful public gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters was held in Karachi on 25 December 2011. Since then Khan has become a real threat to the ruling parties and a future political prospect in Pakistan. According to the International Republican Institute's (IRI's) survey, Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) tops the list of popular parties in Pakistan both at the national and provincial level.
On 6 October 2012, Khan joined a vehicle caravan of protesters from Islamabad to the village of Kotai in Pakistan's South Waziristan region against US drone missile strikes. On 23 March 2013, Khan introduced the "Naya Pakistan Resolution" (New Pakistan) at the start of his election campaign. On 29 April The Observer termed Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the main opposition to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. On 30 April 2013, Manzoor Wattoo president of Pakistan Peoples Party (Punjab) offered Khan the office of prime minister in the possible coalition government which would include the PPP and Khan's PTI, in a move to prevent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to make the government, but the offer was rejected. In January 2014, YouGov ranked Khan as a famous person in and out of Pakistan. Between 2011 and 2013, Khan and Nawaz Sharif began to engage each other in a bitter feud. The rivalry between the two leaders grew in late 2011 when Khan addressed his largest crowd at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. From 26 April 2013, in the run up to the elections, both the PML-N and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf started to criticise each other.
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