Illegal foreigners to face 14 years jail: Nisar

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Monday, while announcing a deadline for foreigners living in Pakistan on fake documentations, warned that strict legal action will be taken against foreigners illegally living the country after August 31.

“Cases will be registered against those illegally living in the country and they will be sent to prison for 14 years,” Nisar said while addressing a press conference here.The interior minister announced the first phase of CNIC verification campaign had been completed successfully. “Around 2.6 million people have verified their CNICs to the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) during a period of one month,” he claimed.

Nisar revealed that 23,000 people had so far been proved to be foreigners living in the country. “We have covered about one-fifth of the total population during the first phase of the CNIC verification campaign,” adding that up till now only four foreigners living in Pakistan on fake CNICs had surrendered their Pakistani nationality voluntarily.

The minister also revealed that scores of people had also been identified living in Pakistan on fake CNICs apart from Mulla Mansour. The minister, while lauding the role of the media and TV channels, stated that with the help of Nadra, media and our people, we will be able to throw out intruders from the country.

The minister said the issue of fake CNICs surfaced in the country during the regimes of Musharraf and the PPP government but those governments did not pay any heed to this grave issue and added that he was trying his best to undo the wrongdoings of the previous governments by introducing reforms and strictly following the standard procedures while issuing identity documents to the people.

Nisar said a high-level meeting on the document verification issue will be called next week, which will be attended by Army Chief General Raheel Sharif as well as heads of intelligence services.

He said the verification process will continue to purge the aliens and illegal people holding Computerized National Identity Cards of Pakistan.The minister said the verification process of Computerised National Identity Cards had been successful so far and over 20 million cards had been verified through SMS. He said that during 15 days, 2.6 million SMS received by Nadra for verification of family members while Nadra also sent 1.8 million SMS to people for this purpose.

He said 22,000 fake CNICs had been identified and cases will be registered against foreigners who did not withdraw their cards. Chaudhry Nisar said 100,000 CNICs have been blocked from 2013 to 2016 and over 2,000 passports were cancelled during this period.

Commenting on a question related to the banners issue, the minister said that Latif Khosa and Aitzaz Ahsan have become big lawyers but they should try to become thorough gentlemen, adding that they use to make long speeches on his statements and they should raise this very issue in the Sindh government as those posters were also pasted at public places in that province.

Replying to another query, the minister said that he had never said that PPP leadership and Zardari were corrupt, adding that he has no problem with the PPP and its leadership as there were many senior and respectful people in that party. “I had simply asked Imran Khan to keep people on his container who have no charges of corruption against them,” said Nisar.