The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has cancelled over 18,000 illegal identity cards through a robust system, coordinating with other stakeholders. According to the reports, the authority has taken this step to address the issue of counterfeit identity cards and fake documents, which pose a threat to national security. As said, new measures include biometric verification of parents and relatives during the processing, SMS alerts to family heads, and two-stage verification for data access. The Agency also vowed that it has strengthened its accountability and inquiry system, leading to penalties and dismissal of those involved in illegal practices, breach of security and damage to the institution.
There have been reports of continued malpractices, issuance of fake identity cards, form-B and other registration documents to illegal migrants including Afghan nationals, Indians, Biharis and Bengalis over the past years, while scores of individuals procured Pakistani Passports and got employment abroad in the Middle East and Europe on Pakistani documents. However, the NADRA authorities not only took a lenient approach to recurrent cases of the issuance of fake identity cards to foreign nationals but the authority altered the Country’s naturalization laws by devising an institutional policy and issuing National ID Cards to thousands of Pashto Speakers carrying Refugee Cards but claimed to surrender Pakistani NICs in greed of cash/ financial assistance that was previously disbursed to Afghan refugees by foreign donors in the past. Such self-coined policies of former high-ups of the agency and the traditional slackness of the bureaucracy have badly spoiled the magnificent national institution and caused irreparable damage to national prestige and security.
Historically, the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was created by the government of Pakistan about 3 decades ago for the sole purpose of computerizing all citizenry data, streamlining records, facilitating the National Planning Commission, and weeing out anomalies from the registration/naturalization process of the country. It was a magnificent project that not only earned great fame at home but also gained landmark appreciation at the international level. The authority assisted several foreign countries in establishing such a comprehensive and well-regulated national database in their nations but gradually could not maintain its institutional standards like the PIA and plunged itself into the deep ditch of institutional corruption, a lack of discipline and accountability.
A fewer number of fraud and counterfeit cases have been highlighted by the authorities in the past and 43 staffers were terminated due to their involvement in the illegal processing of Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) over the past year. Despite recurrent cases of irregularities/fraud and open reports of massive malfunction by the department officials regarding the issuance of NICs to Afghan refugees, no concrete steps had been initiated by the NADRA at the institutional level to permanently block loopholes in its system through the introduction of new regulations, technological advancement along with bringing improvements in recruitment, training and monitoring process. Awfully, once a model institution, is now turned into a hub of corruption, nepotism, and abuse of authority at all levels and in all aspects.
After foreign countries informed the government of Pakistan about bulk cases of Pakistan’s identity documents illegally procured by foreign nationals and a nationwide crackdown was launched against criminals, the prudent bureaucrats cancelled thousands of fake identity cards to save their skin and forestall accountability for the criminal negligence in the past. In fact, thousands of national identity cards have been issued in contradiction to the law by the authorities in the past years that need to be reversed along with strict disciplinary action against the defaulters, setting clear rules to curb these heinous crimes permanently. Such harsh measures have now become inevitable. So, neither foreign nationals nor local crooks ever dare to abuse our national prestige and damage the country’s security at any time in the future.
