LAHORE, Feb 23: Local PML-N leaders are claiming that exiled former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif is planning to return home this year. “Most likely he will land here in the month of October or November this year,” some party officials, who did not want to be identified, said.

Party’s secretary-general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, when contacted by phone, confirmed the report but declined to give the exact date or month of Mr Sharif’s arrival.

“I can say just one thing that he will return home this year,” he said, stressing that no compromise would be struck with the regime for the purpose.

Party president Mian Shahbaz Sharif was to make an attempt to return home in the month of March or April, but the plan was abandoned due to delay in departure of Nawaz Sharif from Saudi Arabia.

The younger brother of the former prime minister had made an abortive attempt to land in Lahore on May 11, 2004. But the authorities banished him again to Riyadh.

PML-N leaders say that efforts are being made to activate the party in the country by completing its organizational network and holding street corner and public meetings.

The party plans to hold a public meeting in Lahore on March 23 and another in Karachi on Aug 14 in connection with centennial celebrations of the formation of the Muslim League, the officials say.

There is also a proposal to hold a party meeting in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh where the League had been formed in 1906, in the month of June which is also likely to be attended by the Sharifs.

The PML-N plans to convene a meeting of the re-commissioned central working committee in London in the last week of March or the first week of April.