Nadra forms cell to clean ‘dirty data’

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has raised a special cell in top registration body to vigorously pursue its ‘national re-verification programme’, a move to clean all ‘dirty data involving tens of thousands of the Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) illegally issued to foreign nationals.

The special cell, set up at the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) Islamabad office, is being headed by Col (R) Mir Ajam Khan Durrani who previously served as Director General Nadra Balochistan.

“Mr Durrani will directly oversee an emergency re-verification of CNICs launched on the directives of federal government,” a senior official of Nadra engaged with the process told Geo News (Programme ASKKS) on Thursday.

In a three phases exercise, Nadra teams will engage 25 million families for re-verification of their CNICs and an amnesty is also being announced for aliens who will voluntarily surrender their illegal cards, officials dealing with this emergency programme said on Thursday. Nadra staffers will also be given amnesty if they admit their faults, if they did in issuing identity cards to foreign nationals, they added.

NADRA's special team will clean all 'dirty data' within six months by touching 130 million people through Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), a senior NADRA told Geo News. The vigilance team with help of intelligence agencies will clean hundreds of thousands of dirty files which helped over 45, 000 aliens to obtain Pakistani nationality since 2005, he said.

Many stakeholders—intelligence agencies (Inter Services Intelligence, Special Branch, Military Intelligence and Intelligence Bureau) and National Counter-Terrorism Authority—have expressed their sever concerns over the mechanism being adopted for re-verification of over 100 million CNICs in next six months.  Senior officials, The News spoke to off the record, revealed that they have prepared their own recommendations and to be sent to sent to ministry of interior for ‘cleaning all the mess in Nadra data’.

“We’ve warned Nadra to improve its systems—fear potential data could be leaked to hostile spy agencies,” a senior official said on condition of anonymity.  Key points of their recommendations, according to official are: “NADRA should improve its ‘Online Verification System’ and ‘Automatic Finger Print Identification System’ before going for such a challenging job. New policy should be chalked by taking inputs of all stake holders i.e. ISI, IB, Special Branch and Ministries of Safron and Defence.”