PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif is set to return to Pakistan on October 21, ending his four-year exile in the UK, his brother and party president Shehbaz Sharif confirmed on Tuesday.
A statement by Shehbaz, shared by PML-N Information Secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb on social media platform X, said that the party founder would be given a grand welcome upon return.
Shehbaz had in July said if the PML-N was voted to power in the forthcoming elections, Nawaz would be the party’s candidate for the slot of prime minister.
The elder Sharif left the country in November 2019 on medical grounds following his conviction in a corruption case but never returned. Nawaz’s departure took place approximately 20 days after the Islamabad High Court’s order, which granted him temporary relief on medical grounds in Al Azizia case.
In Feb 2020, the then government had declared him an absconder, and later in the same year, an accountability court had declared him a proclaimed offender in the Toshakhana vehicles reference.
It is pertinent to mention here that in June 2023, in what was seen as a move to pave the way for Nawaz’s return, the National Assembly and Senate approved the Elections (Amendment) Act 2023 in June, which empowered the Election Commission of Pakistan to unilaterally fix the date for elections and also limits the lawmakers’ disqualification period to five years with retrospective effect.
The bill, dubbed as “person-specific legislation” by the opposition, was expected to benefit Nawaz and newly-formed Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party (IPP) patron Jahangir Khan Tareen. The two were disqualified for life more than five years ago after a Supreme Court judgement ruled that the disqualification under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution was for life.
In June, an accountability court also acquitted Nawaz in a reference pertaining to the alleged illegal allotment of plots in 1986 to the owner of a media house.
The case was among several others in which members of the Sharif family were cleared after a ruling coalition led by the PML-N came to power in April last year following the ouster of PTI chief Imran Khan as the prime minister through a no-confidence vote.
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