LONDON: Three-time prime minister and PML-N’s absconding leader Nawaz Sharif has purchased his air ticket for Pakistan, source said on Monday.
Sources close to Sharif told this scribe that the three-time prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) de-facto chief Nawaz Sharif, who has been wanted by courts, plans to land at Abu Dhabi International Airport from London on October 21 from where he plans to fly to Lahore on the same date.
Nawaz Sharif has booked a ticket for Etihad Airways’ business class.
The sources informed that he has booked Etihad Airways Flight EY 243 which will land at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport at 6:25 pm.
The PML-N supremo will be accompanied by his staff and personal advisors including Muhammad Waqar, Dr Adnan and Mian Nasir Janjua.
Senator Irfan Siddiqui will also be accompanying the former prime minister.
Several party leaders and former members of parliament also booked their seats on the same flight from Abu Dhabi, sources said adding that the PML-N workers from different walks of life would arrive at Abu Dhabi airport to receive them.
Though there is no official word on Sharif’s return, PML-N senior leader and former federal minister Rana Tanveer Hussain told media on Sunday that Nawaz Sharif’s return to the homeland on October 21 was “irreversible”.
The PML-N supremo who was serving a sentence in jail following his conviction in a corruption case had left the country in November 2019 after getting permission from the Islamabad High Court which allowed him to go to the United Kingdom to get medical treatment for his ailment.
In February 2020, the then government had declared Nawaz Sharif an absconder, and later in the same year, an accountability court had declared him a proclaimed offender in the Toshakhana vehicles reference.
It bears mentioning that in June 2023, in what was seen as a move to pave the way for Nawaz’s return, both houses of the parliament passed the Elections (Amendment) Act 2023, 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.
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.
Nawaz Sharif has been living in Britain for the last four years in self-exile and has decided to return on Oct 21.
