ISLAMABAD, Former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Friday said that non-inclusion of Sharif family’s name in Exit Control List (ECL) means that the decision has been made somewhere else and not taken by the interior ministry’s committee.
His statement came during the National Assembly session when Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) member Syed Naveed Qamar questioned that in some cases the name of suspects are immediately included in ECL, but Nawaz Sharif and his children names have not been placed in the list despite recommendation of NATIONAL Accountability Bureau (NAB).
“Why is there a double standard pertaining to placing names in ECL?” he asked
Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal and Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhary were not in the house to answer the questions of opposition.
When no minister came forward to answer the question, Chaudhry Nisar abruptly stood up and said, “Before 2013, names in ECL were placed through recommendation. If a couple had indulged into a fight, one of them was included in ECL.”
“In my tenure, I changed the policy of ECL and eliminated the role of minister and secretary in this regard. Now, a committee of interior ministry decides whether a person’s name should be placed on ECL or not,” he explained.
Nisar told that the committee used to take decision on merit in his tenure whereas the suggestion of NAB was taken seriously.
“If NAB’s recommendation has been ignored in this case it means that the decision has not been taken by the committee but somewhere else,” he suggested.
The writer heads a leading news wire service ‘The Law Today Pakistan’ commonly known as TLTP. He has a special focus on news relating to superior courts adjudication, access to right of information, civil, political, social and economic rights under the approach that existing cyber regime realization ensures procedural fairness in administrative law. He can be reached at editor@tltpnews.com
