Islamabad:
The Minister of State in the Interior Talal Chaudhry said that the government had taken solid measures to limit the excessive use of identity documents and stressed that no provincial discrimination had occurred during national verification campaigns of family trees and national computerized identity cards (CNIC).
Answering questions from senators during the upper chamber session the other day, the minister said that more than 5,000 passports issued to individuals falsely claiming Pakistani nationality had been detected abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, then delivered by the holders themselves, admitting that they were not Pakistani citizens.
Chaudhry said that the surveys have shown that many of these identities had been fraudulently inserted into family trees, either by Nadra staff involved in professional fault, or by families, deliberately including non-nationals for personal reasons.
He added that such fraudulent additions have not only led to the issue of CNIC, but also facilitated the purchase of Pakistani passports for foreign nationals.
To limit this improper use, national verification campaigns were carried out by the Ministry of the Interior in 2014 and 2019, aimed at cleaning the national database and validating family files. In addition, the government has set up a double verification mechanism involving a district committee led by the assistant commissioner and a zonaux verification council, which examines the reported cases returned by the law enforcement agencies or intelligence.
Talal informed the room that no specific measure in the province was taken. “Nadra operates as a national basis, and we do not deal with any different regions,” he said. He recognized that the highest cases of abusive use of identity were observed in Balutchistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but stressed that the question was not rooted in regional biases, rather in improper use of the system by certain individuals.
To improve transparency, Nadra has also launched a public facilitation system, allowing citizens to check their family trees by telephone and report any unauthorized person linked to their files. Of the total complaints received, 71,000 cases involved relationships of people included in family trees without consent.
Chaudhry also confirmed that internal responsibility measures had been taken, 266 employees of the Nadra were rejected and that others penalized after service requests. He stressed that officers of all ranks, including assistant administrators, were held responsible and that criminal procedures were initiated if necessary.
He reassured the house that any case underlined by the parliamentarians would be re -examined and revised.
