LAHORE, July 11: The myth of the so-called agreement the government claims the Sharifs had signed before being banished to Saudi Arabia some 31 months back will be exploded in the Punjab Assembly in its next session, a senior PML-N leader confirmed on Friday.

Rana Sanaullah Khan, who leads the PML-N parliamentary party in the provincial legislature, told reporters there was just no agreement between the Sharifs and the then Musharraf government. The Sharifs, he said, had simply sent an application to then president Rafiq Tarar that they should be allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.

This application, he said, was being mistaken as an agreement by the Sharifs.

Himself a lawyer, Rana Sanaullah Khan said in the eyes of law such an application could not be treated as an agreement and whatever the Sharifs had said under the police custody carried little legal value.

Rana said under the Constitution or the Pakistan Penal Code, no citizen of Pakistan could be banished, least of all a former prime minister, a former chief minister and their families. In his opinion, the government had committed an illegality by forcing the Sharifs to leave the country.

Asked if the government had committed an illegality how would he characterize the role of the Sharifs which led to their removal to the kingdom, Rana reiterated that anything done under coercion or in police custody was of little legal significance.

He said it was absurd to say that the Sharifs had agreed to stay abroad for 10 years or two years or that the so-called deal was applicable to four male members of the Sharifs.

Some press reports say that the agreement was applicable only to Mian Nawaz Sharif, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Mian Abbas Sharif and Husain Nawaz. All women, the reports say, are exempted from whatever understanding had been reached between the two sides.

Asked if there was no agreement, why the Sharifs’ counsel Ashtar Ausaf had failed to appear before the Lahore High Court on the day it was scheduled to take up the habeas corpus of the Shahbaz Sharif family, Rana said the lawyer’s abstention had caused an irreparable loss to the case.

In his opinion, Ashtar Ausaf had stayed away under pressure from the government. Also, he said Ashtar should have sought withdrawal of the deportation orders instead of calling for an end to harassment or restoration of some utilities.

The PML-N leader said that a session of the Punjab Assembly was expected to be called soon in which the party would raise the banishment issue with full force. In case the government seemed reluctant to call one, opposition parties would requisition it.

He said adjournment and privilege motions through which the matter would be raised in the Punjab Assembly had already been admitted by the speaker.

Rana said all opposition parties were mounting pressure on the government that the exiled Sharifs and PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto should be allowed to return home.

He said the PML-N would also consider various options to have the demand met.