Nisar okays initial report on re-verification of CNICs of 25m families

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Monday assented to initial report outlining a roadmap for re-verification of CNICs of 25 million families.

The approval was given after a briefing given by chairman Nadra to the interior minister. The emergency re-verification of CNICs was launched by Nadra on the directions of the interior minister.

The multi-pronged strategy includes amnesty scheme, engaging the community through helpline, SMS service, reward system, family intrusion, detection of data, across the board application of fraud detection and citizen profiling.

According to the strategy, Nadra would use the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s bio-metric SIMs verification data of almost 130 million mobile phone users. The Nadra would a send short-message-The Nadra would a send short-message-service (SMS) to the heads of the family requesting them to confirm their family tree (members of family).

After receiving the text if there is a false addition of any family member, the head of the family would text back to Nadra with a “No.” Nadra after receiving any indication of suspected alien in a family tree through the SMS would request the family head to come to the nearest Nadra office for re-verification of family tree.

This would help Nadra identify an alien in a family and would ultimately lead to blocking of the CNIC besides cancellation of passport if any. The strategy paper highlighted that citizen profiling would be done initially in districts where higher number of fake CNICs were detected by Nadra.

Nadra in its strategy paper maintained that late data entry of any family member in a family tree would also help them identify alien entry into Nadra’s database. The Nadra would also set up a helpline capable of handling 10,000 calls per day and a SMS gateway of 300,000 SMS per day to facilitate the general public who would report suspected CNICs issued to aliens by the Nadra.

The interior minister has given two months amnesty to Nadra employees to voluntarily come forward and declare any false data entries made by them for registration of aliens. Similarly, this scheme has also been extended for aliens to voluntarily surrender their CNICs obtained from Nadra through illegal means.

The interior minister has also approved reward scheme for general public who would help Nadra in identifying CNIC issued to aliens, either through SMS, calls or personal reporting by individuals in any of Nadra’s centre across Pakistan.

On the orders of the interior minister a new directorate with special operations of re-verification of CNICs has also been set up at the Nadra headquarters. The details of helpline centre, and SMS alerts would also be shared by Nadra with the public through mass media.

The interior minister has given six months deadline for re-verification of the CNICs to Nadra, declaring “it an important matter pertaining to national security.” The interior minister has ordered Nadra to utilize all resources to achieve the desired objective of removing aliens from Nadra’s data base. Meanwhile, the minister will also address Nadra’s Board meeting on Tuesday (today) where the final approval will be accorded to the proposed strategy.