ISLAMABAD: Thousands of names will be removed from the exit control list if the departments and agencies concerned fail to justify their placement on the ECL within a month.

“We have issued 7,500 notices to the departments which have placed the names of different people on the ECL. They have been asked to justify the placing of these names on the ECL within a month or these will be removed,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said at a news conference at the spacious Punjab House here on Sunday.

In reply to a question about the arrest of an accused, Moazzam Ali, in connection with the murder of MQM leader Dr Imran Farooq, the minister said he had received the joint investigation team’s report on the case and hinted at an “important development” over the next two to three days.

Also read: Misuse of ECL

“Wait till Monday or Tuesday,” he told journalists.

The interior minister said the government was preparing a new policy to regulate and standardise the process of placement of names on the ECL. A draft of the policy would be circulated through the media for consultations with the stakeholders over the next four to six weeks, he said, adding that there were people who had been on the ECL for decades.

Nisar not happy with method behind barring citizens from going abroad

Because of the absence of a standard procedure or law, people had even managed to put the names of persons on the ECL due to personal enmity, he disclosed. Recently, he added, he had received a letter from an alleged member of Al Zulfiqar Organisation whose name had been on the ECL since 1988.

“This is not a banana republic,” he said, adding that the government was contemplating a policy that the names on the ECL should be placed for a maximum period of three years, with a review after every six months. But, he said the policy would not be applied to the cases of members of banned outfits, army deserters or people associated with the country’s nuclear programme.

EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS: The interior minister said that during the period of previous governments, people convicted and imprisoned in foreign countries had been brought home under agreements on exchange of offenders and then they were released.

He disclosed that out of the 70 alleged criminals recently brought back from Thailand and Sri Lanka under such arrangements only 10 were behind bars. Most of them were drug-traffickers and one of them even travelled outside the country 19 times, he added.

Chaudhry Nisar said the FIA had summoned three officials of Pakistani Embassy in Thailand, including deputy ambassador and a counsellor, after they failed to respond to the notices sent to them.

ARMS LICENCES: The minister announced that all arms licences issued by the federal government would be cancelled if these were not “revalidated” through the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) by Dec 31.

He said that after taking over the charge he had imposed a ban on issuance of all types of arms licences, but regretted that the governments of Sindh, Balo­chistan and Khyber Pakh­tunkhwa had lifted the restriction.

He said a proposal was under consideration not to issue arms licences to persons below 25 years of age.

BLACK SHEEP: He said that 64 “black sheep” had been identified in the FIA and sidelined. Some of them, he added, had sought stay order from courts. He said he would personally appear before the courts to seek repeal of these stay orders.

In reply to a question about Nadra’s report on the NA-122 constituency of National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, the minister urged judges of the election tribunal to take notice of the contradictory statements being issued after every hearing.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2015

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