Former PM Imran Khan to get security
The newly-elected government amended rules related to the Exit Control List (ECL) and removed the names of several thousand people from the list, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah announced Friday.
Addressing his maiden press conference at the Interior Ministry, the minister said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had formed a committee to update the rules of including a person’s name in the ECL.
Sanaullah said: “Therefore, with a quick pace, federal minister Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Asad Mehmood, Naveed Qamar, and Azam Nazeer Tarrar put forth their suggestions and the cabinet has approved it.” Elaborating further, the interior minister said if a person’s name has been on the exit list for more than 120 days then their name would be automatically removed from the ECL. “…a total of 4,863 are in the list, and with this intervention, around 3,000 people’s names have been removed.”
The interior minister said the government could extend the duration of the cap by 90 days if it believes of having had evidence against a person.
Moving on, the interior minister said 30,000 people were placed on the black list and the Provisional National Identification List (PNIL). He added that since the number of people on the lists is huge, there will be changes to them as well in the next few weeks.
The interior ministry noted that since there were threats to former prime minister Imran Khan, foolproof security has been provided to the PTI chairman.