BY the government’s own admission, some of the 7,500 names currently on the Exit Control List have been languishing there for decades and even include individuals who found themselves placed on it for reasons of personal enmity.

This was revealed by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday while dilating upon an impending and long overdue policy review of the ECL. According to him, if the relevant departments and agencies are unable within one month to justify the inclusion of the individuals on the list, these names will be removed.

A new policy, he added, was being prepared to regulate and standardise the process. Among the revisions being considered is for the names placed on the ECL — other than those of individuals belonging to banned outfits, army deserters and those associated with Pakistan’s nuclear programme — to be included for three years only, and subject to a review every six months.

Take a look: Misuse of ECL

There is much about the process of including people on the ECL that smacks of darker times when political witch-hunts were far more brazen and unabashed — not surprising when one considers that the system is underpinned by a holdover from the Gen Zia days known as the Exit from Pakistan (Control) Ordinance 1981.

According to this law, the government has no obligation to give the individual being considered for inclusion on the ECL any opportunity to show cause; indeed it can, in the public interest, refuse to disclose the reason for taking such action at all.

Moreover, the ordinance says that an order to prevent anyone from travelling out of the country “shall not be called in question before any courts or other authority”. Such opaque provisions are an open invitation to abuse.

That would have been the case even more so had the courts, regardless of the ouster clause in the law, not entertained petitions from those seeking relief from their inclusion on the ECL, and given relief to many of them.

Nevertheless, the list continues to function as a handy tool to rein in ‘undesirable’ elements and victimise those whose patriotism may be suspect.

For instance, although the interior minister has said recently that the government has not placed anyone on the ECL for political reasons, the case of Baloch activists Mama Qadeer and Farzana Majeed falls firmly in that category.

The procedure for inclusion in the ECL should be made more transparent, and its modus operandi rationalised without delay.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2015

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