Maryam asks PML-N leaders to arrange grand welcome for Nawaz Sharif's return to Pakistan

PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz Sharif has tasked the party ticket holders of Punjab province to mobilise a huge crowd to give a rousing welcome to her father and Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who is scheduled to return to the country from London on October 21 to lead the party's election campaign, it emerged on Friday.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has set an ambitious target of gathering over 200,000 people to receive the 73-year-old party supremo at the Lahore airport as he plans to end his over four years of self-imposed exile in the UK, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Presiding over a meeting at the party secretariat in Model Town on Thursday, Maryam, 49, was more concerned about the “historic welcome” PML-N workers should give to Nawaz, the report said.

The PML-N chief organiser tasked the party ticket holders of Punjab to bring as many people as they could to give a rousing welcome to her father, it said.

The participants, the aspirants of the party tickets for Punjab and national assemblies, were also excited, hoping this time around there would be no change in the homecoming date of Nawaz, the report said, adding that the participants pledged to give a historic welcome to the former prime minister.

Earlier, some senior PML-N lea­ders had given his ret­urn date on several occasions, but this is the first time the party president Shehbaz Sharif has officially announced his elder brother’s homecoming on October 21.

Nawaz had left for London in November 2019 after the Lahore High Court granted him four-week permission allowing him to go abroad for his treatment. But he never returned to Pakistan where he was convicted of corruption and jailed.

He was convicted in the Al-Azizia Mills and Avenfield corruption cases in 2018. He was serving a seven-year imprisonment at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail in the Al-Azizia Mills case before he was allowed to proceed to London in 2019 on "medical grounds".

Shehbaz, 71, has previously said that Nawaz will be the next prime minister if the party returns to power in the general elections.

In August, Shehbaz said his elder brother would return to Pakistan in September to face his pending court cases and lead the party's campaign for the general election.

However, the plan was changed after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decided to conduct a fresh delimitation of Constituencies on the basis of the new census, delaying the general elections, which were scheduled to be held within the 90-day constitutional period since the August 9 dissolution of Parliament.

According to a Geo News report, the three-time prime minister's return was delayed till mid-October, not because of the ECP announcement but over the advice of party loyalists that September is too hot and severe for large-scale political gatherings, making mid-October a better time for return.

The decision to return around mid-October was taken after Shehbaz held meetings with the PML-N supremo when the former visited London in August.

In 2016, Nawaz stepped down as the prime minister after the Supreme Court disqualified him for life for concealing assets. His appeals against the conviction are currently pending in the relevant courts.

He was disqualified by the Supreme Court in 2017. In 2018, he became ineligible to hold public office for life after a Supreme Court verdict in the Panama Papers case.

He was expected to come back when his party came to power after Imran Khan was toppled in April last year but the expectation was not fulfilled.

However, his PML-N party maintained that he would come back before the election and lead the party. Sharif is considered a crowd-puller and a major force to bring voters to the polling stations.