LAHORE - The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday directed the federal government to submit comments on a petition seeking explanation of procedure pertaining to the placement and removal of names on the no-fly list.
A high court bench directed the government to come up with its reply till Feb 20, the next date of hearing.
The petitioner cited the federal government, prime minister, interior minister, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman and other departments concerned respondents.
The petition pleads, “According to the law, the interior secretary has the right to place names on the Exit Control List (ECL).” He contended that names were not included or excluded from the ECL even on the court orders which further complicates the ECL mechanism.
He submitted the procedure of induction or removal of the names from the ECL be clarified.
The order came after a few days after the LHC gave Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz permission to leave the country and ordered the government to lift his name from the blacklist for 10 days.
Also the PML-N leader had pleaded that the interior ministry had placed his name on the ECL arbitrarily as no opportunity of hearing had been given to him before taking the action.
However, on the order of the Supreme Court, the federal cabinet ordered on Jan 17 the removal of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah’s names from the ECL.
Former chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar had ordered to exclude their names from the ECL as well as the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report pertaining to the fake bank accounts case.