PTI’s Senator Ejaz Chaudhry writes from Kot Lakhpat Jail

Senator Ejaz Chaudhry of the embattled Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Tuesday poured his heart out after he was not allowed to attend the Senate session despite issuance of his production orders by Senate Chairman Yusuf Raza Gilani. 

In his letter, which is now circulating in the media, Chaudhry said he has been incarcerated for the last 20 months and the Senate chairman issued his production orders thrice during this period, but every time the government Punjab government trashed these orders and returned the Senate staff empty handed. He said the Senate chairman issued his production orders in 2023, 2024, and now in 2025. He said that trashing Senate chairman’s orders was a joke with democracy. He said that rule of tyranny cannot work.

On Tuesday, Chaudhry was not allowed to attend the Senate session despite production orders issued by Gilani a day earlier. This is not the first production order issued for the senator, who is imprisoned at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail. In March last year, he was due to be produced in the Senate but was unable to attend the session.

In November of last year, Chaudhry was among 21 other PTI figures formally indicted by a Lahore Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in cases related to the countrywide riots on May 9, 2023, registered at the Racecourse and Sarwar Road police stations.

“We are greatly saddened as colleagues of a senator of this house who has been incarcerated for the last 1.5 years in a Lahore jail,” Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Shibli Faraz, said.

Opposition lawmakers could be seen carrying placards with pictures of the missing senator during the senate proceedings.

Faraz thanked the speaker for issuing the production order for Chaudhry adding, “Despite that, he is not among us because the government of Punjab does not want him to come here and talk.”

The PTI leader said that it was Chaudhry’s legal, constitutional, and democratic right to attend the Senate session, terming the Punjab government’s explanation of security issues obstructing his production in the Senate as “regrettable”.

He said that the house belonged to everyone, adding that “our custodian’s letter was not given importance.” He called upon his fellow senators to “stand as one” to protest the “lack of respect shown to the parliament.”