Islamabad:
Prime Minister of Internal Talal Chaudhry has said the government has taken robust measures to limit the abuse of identity documents and emphasized that no provincial discrimination occurred during the national verification campaigns for family trees and computer national identity cards (CNIC).
In response to questions from senators under the top house session, the Minister declared over 5,000 passports issued to individuals who were mistakenly claimed Pakistani nationality were discovered abroad, mainly in Saudi -Arabia, and subsequently surrendered by the holders themselves and admitted that they were not Pakistani nationals.
Chaudhry said studies showed that many of these identities were fraudulent in family trees-one by Nadra staff involved in Malpractice or by families deliberately including non-National Citizens of Personal Motives.
He added that such false additions not only led to the issuance of CNICs, but also facilitated purchasing of Pakistani passports for foreign nationals.
To slow down this abuse, nationwide verification campaigns were carried out by the Ministry of Interior in 2014 and 2019 with the aim of cleaning the national database and validating family registers. In addition, the government has established a double verification mechanism involving a committee at the district level led by the Deputy Commissioner and a Zonal Verification Board undergoing marked cases referred to by law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
Talal informed Parliament that no provincial -specific action was taken. “Nadra operates on a national basis, and we do not treat any region differently,” he said. He acknowledged that the highest cases of abuse of identity were observed in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but emphasized that the question was not rooted in regional bias, rather in the abuse of the system of certain persons.
To improve transparency, Nadra also launched a public facility system that enabled citizens to verify their family trees via telephone and report all unauthorized persons attached to their records. Out of the total complaints received, 71,000 cases involved reports of individuals included in family trees without consent.
Chaudhry also confirmed that internal responsibility measures have been taken, where 266 Nadra employees were rejected and other punished after departmental surveys. He emphasized that officers across all rows, including Deputy Directors, were held responsible and a criminal case was initiated where needed.
He assured the house that any case that was highlighted by parliamentarians would be examined and restored again.
