Maryam moves LHC seeking removal of name from ECL.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Saturday filed a petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC) seeking the removal of her name from the Exit Control List (ECL).

The application, filed through Advocate Amjad Pervaiz, has listed the federal government, Federal Investigation Agency and chairman and director general of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as respondents.

Maryam is currently free on bail in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills (CSM) case, in which she is a suspect, but her name remains on the no-fly list. Her father, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, travelled to London last month after the government and courts granted him permission to fly abroad on medical grounds. In her petition, Maryam has argued that her name was placed on the ECL without notice and providing her with an opportunity of hearing through a memorandum dated August 20, 2018.

The application states that the recommendations by NAB were "acted upon in a mechanical manner and without judicious application of mind in contravention of the law declared by the superior courts".

According to the petition, the apprehension by the government and NAB that Maryam will abscond if allowed to travel abroad does not appeal to reason in view of her track record. It says that during the filing of corruption references against them by the NAB in the accountability court of Islamabad, Maryam and her father were attending to Kulsoom Nawaz who was undergoing cancer treatment in London; despite this, they returned to Pakistan to face the trial.

"It is also an admitted fact that the petitioner and her father volunteered to come back to surrender [...] even after a judgement of conviction announced in their absence" in the Avenfield reference, the petition argues. It states that the move to place Maryam's name on the no-fly list was prompted by "political rhetoric, irrelevant and considerations extraneous to law" and that the jurisdiction to impose ban on travel by an accused or convict is the "exclusive domain" of the court of law concerned and not the government and the NAB.

Noting that her father was shifted abroad on account of his critical health condition, the petition says Maryam is "also entitled to relief on compassionate and humanitarian grounds".

It says that after her mother's demise, it is Maryam who has been looking after...