Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has disclosed that committees comprising members of parliament have been formed at district level to restore blocked Computerized National Identity Cards (CNIs’) numbering 125000. He said NDRA will restore the blocked CNICs’on the verification members of parliament.
It is no longer a secret that a large number of Afghan Nationals and citizens of some other countries obtained Pakistani CNICs’ with the connivance of NADRA officials. But this bitter fact has also to be admitted that politicians of Pukhtun Nationalist parties of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and Baluchistan were also involved in this illegal activity. There were allegations in media that the leadership of a staunch allied party of PML-N from Baluchistan had managed to obtain CNICs’for a half a million Afghan Refugees. In Karachi also this important identity document was obtained illegallyby foreign nationals. When the frequency of terrorist attacks increased manifold, the then Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had to act in the supreme national interest and the Ministry of Interior directed NADRA to conduct a comprehensive re-verification drive of the CNICs. This most important move in the national interest infuriated Pk MAP Chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai and ANP President Asfandiar Wali. They agitated this issue on parochial arguments in the National Assembly and described it an act of victimization of Pukhtuns which is not the reality. Playing the ethnicity card for political motives is detrimental for national cohesion and solidarity of the country. In fact; Afghan Nationals were inducted in the family trees of those Pakistani families whose forefathers were the confide citizens of the areas which constituted Pakistan in 1947. They now face the ordeal of blocked CNICs’for whom the restoration process these cards should be simplified without the involvement of elected representatives of nationalist parties. Revenue record of immovable property and school certificates pertaining to the pre 1980 periods can serve an authentic document for the restoration of CNICs’. Moreover, the role of the state agencies at this point of time should not be excluded to make the verification procedure fool proof. National interest should reign supreme over political expediencies of securing vote bank for next general elections as the country is virtually in a state of war against the amorphous enemy and the repatriation of Afghan Refugees is inevitable if the government is really keen to win this war once and for all and make the country once again the cradle of peace enabling the common man to live a peaceful life.
