In late 1994, he joined hands with former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Hamid Gul and Muhammad Ali Durrani — the latter, at the time, was heading Pasban, a breakaway youth wing of JI.
Hamid Gul and Imran Khan: the new equation. ─ Herald archives
They planned to launch what they called a ‘pressure group’. Short of being a political party, it was meant to work as a civil society watchdog for the government of the day.
In the February 1995 edition of
Herald, the three spoke about how the group was to be a social movement rather than a political entity. They also saw it becoming a "third force" and "the first middle-class movement in the land".
A Pasban protest outside the Punjab Assembly. ─ Herald archives
The pressure group never materialised. Imran Khan quickly became uncomfortable with the idea of being seen as a puppet in the hands of Gul, according to Zaigham Khan, the
Herald staffer who reported on the trio’s plans.
Later the same year (1994), his friends, including a retired Lt. Gen, managed to persuade him to pursue a political career.
On April 25, 1996, Khan formed his own political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. It did not win a single seat in the 1997 elections, which were the PTI's first.
A few years later, the retired army man left the party, saying that Imran listens to none. Another few years passed and another seasoned politician left the party, sharing the same sentiments.
In 1999, Khan came out in support of Gen Pervez Musharraf, and in the 2002 polls under the former military dictator, the party won one seat ─ Khan's own.
However, Khan's party urged him to resign from his National Assembly seat in 2007 after the Karachi carnage, and subsequently boycotted the 2008 polls, holding the position that an elected parliament had little to no meaning under a president in military uniform.
Imran Khan rips up his nomination papers for the 2008 polls as he announces the PTI's boycott of the General Election that year. ─ AFP/File
Khan himself had briefly been detained under the lawyers' movement crackdown against critics of Musharraf in 2007 after trying to lead a protest at Punjab University. He also joined a host of voices demanding a probe into the murder of Benazir Bhutto in 2008.
It was 2011 when people once again saw Imran Khan active in politics. His jalsas in Karachi and Lahore drew massive crowds ─ comparable perhaps only to those witnessed last in the '80s at Benazir's homecoming rally.
Despite a strong campaign in the lead-up to the 2013 polls, the party failed to win a majority at the centre and sat on the opposition benches with 32 seats. It did, however, form government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after an alliance with the Jamaat-i-Islami.
Khan and the PTI spent the next four years protesting against rigging and corruption in the government, calling for accountability of politicians.
In 2014, Khan took out a long march to the capital and held the longest ever sit-in against alleged rigging in the 2013 polls, which
he held the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N responsible for.
He joined hands with Pakistan Awami Tehreek leader Tahirul Qadri for the dharna, who was agitating for justice for victims of the Model Town tragedy.
Imran Khan and PAT chief Tahirul Qadri put on a show during the 2014 dharna. ─ Dawn/File
The sit-in against continued for 126 days, but was called off after a Taliban attack on Peshawar's Army Public School in December 2014.
Veteran politician Javed Hashmi, who held a position as PTI president before
resigning from the party, accused Khan of
working with "non-political forces" and "script-writers" who, he claimed, were conspiring against the government.
Imran Khan addresses dharna participants from atop a container. ─ Reuters/File
The former PTI leader even alleged that senior party members had not been convinced that there had been rigging on a large scale in Punjab during the 2014 election, despite the PTI's public stance during their historic sit-in the same year that large-scale election rigging had resulted in the party's loss.
The allegations have never been substantiated with evidence.
Days after the sit-in, Khan married journalist Reham Khan at his Banigala residence on January 8, 2015, in a simple ceremony.
Imran and Reham tie the knot at Banigala. — AFP/File
Although the wedding received a great deal of public attention, it was
also criticised for its proximity to the Army Public School terrorist attack in which more than 140 people — majority of them students — were killed.
The relationship lasted just nine months, and Khan later called it one of the
"biggest mistakes" of his life. Reham wrote a risque 'tell-all' which included details about her time married to Khan, which she released in the days leading up to the 2018 polls.
However, just as it seemed the PTI was running out of steam, the Panama Papers were released in April 2016. Khan, who described the leaks as 'God sent' began pressing the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif to come clean about his wealth.
In the months following the leaks, the government and opposition tussled over the Terms of Reference (ToRs) for the commission that was to investigate the allegations against the Sharif family.
The PTI in June 2016 filed a petition with the Election Commission of Pakistan seeking disqualification of Sharif for allegedly concealing his assets. This was to be the beginning of the end for Sharif.
Subsequently, a number of petitions were filed against the Sharif family in the Supreme Court ─ most notably by the PTI, JI, PAT and Awami Muslim League.
JI chief Sirajul Haq presents a copy of the party's petition to the media — Dawn/File
Khan encouraged his followers to continue protesting against corruption and then conceived the idea of a second long sit-in against corruption dubbed the 'Islamabad lockdown'.
Read more: Imran Khan: His botched sit-in, turnabouts and push-ups
The protest, however, never came to fruition as the SC ─ a day before the Nov 2 protest ─ held a hearing of the Panamagate petitions and asked for ToRs to probe the allegations.
The Panama saga finally concluded on July 6, 2018, when the Supreme Court sentenced Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Captain Safdar to jail for corruption.
Read more: How Pakistan's Panama Papers probe unfolded
But the two years in between the leaks and the final judgement were beset by divisive politics and court cases upon court cases filed against various political leaders for various reasons. During that time, on a petition moved by PML-N's Hanif Abbasi, the PTI chief faced a disqualification case in the Supreme Court. The court, however,
dismissed the case against Khan in December 2017 after lengthy hearings; his close aide, Jahangir Tareen was disqualified.
Khan himself, to date, is facing a number of cases himself.
Imran Khan disembarks from a helicopter. ─ Youtube screengrab
Among them are two cases ─ before the
Islamabad and
Peshawar High Courts ─ seeking his disqualification from public office on multiple grounds, including his failure to mention his alleged daughter, Tyrian White, in the nomination papers filed for the 2018 General Elections; a case before the KP National Accountability Bureau for
alleged misuse of the provincial government's helicopter during his party's 2013-2018 rule in the province; and a 2014 case before an
Anti-Terrorism Court in Islamabad for an attack on the PTV headquarters in the capital during the Islamabad dharna.
Khan
married a third time in 2018 ─ to Bushra Bibi, his spiritual leader from Pakpattan who he had frequented for about two years ─ in a simple ceremony in Lahore.
Read more: What brings PTI chief to a remote town?
Imran and Bushra's nikkah ceremony in Lahore. ─ DawnNewsTV
The mystique and rumours around his third wife ─ who observes a full veil ─ suggest that she is the one responsible for his turn towards spirituality and his ascent to prime ministership. But all this is just speculation.
A month before the July 25 polls, Khan and Bushra were filmed offering prayers at the shrine of Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar in Pakpattan.
In the July 25 general elections, the PTI bagged an unprecedented 116 National Assembly seats in the election amid other political parties crying foul. Imran Khan won all five seats that he contested on.
Imran Khan delivers an address to the nation on July 26. ─ AP/File
The PTI's complete tally in the NA, after recruiting independents and appointing candidates to its reserved seats ─ and subtracting the multiple seats won by Khan and two other MNAs, went up to 152. But the party's spokesperson claimed that the party, with the help of its allies, has garnered the support of 180+ MNAs.
Soon after results started trickling in and PTI emerged in the lead, Imran Khan was referred to as the 'PM-in-waiting', with the party head also
delivering a victory speech the day after the elections.
"I want to clarify why I entered politics," said Khan in his speech. "Politics could not have given me anything. I wanted Pakistan to become the country that my leader Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had dreamed of."