Rally demands CNICs be issued to Bengali community

Leaders of the Bengali community on Sunday demanded that the government issue computerised national identity cards (CNIC) to the community members, abolish the National Alien Registration Authority's (NARA) cards, stop harassing the community members and count them in the upcoming census.

The demands were made during a gathering organised by the Pakistani Bengali Action Committee outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC), which was attended by a large number of Bengali community members, particularly women and children.

Addressing the gathering, community leaders, including Sheikh Feroz, Maulana Rafiqul Hussaini and Habibur Rehman Ghani, said non-issuance of CNICs was the biggest problem that the community had been facing.

“A majority of the Bengali-origin Pakistanis do not have CNICs and are living like aliens and illegal migrants in their own country,” said Feroz, who is a former Orangi Town nazim and Pakistan Peoples Party leader.

Bengalis should be seen as equals as they are patriotic and have sacrificed a lot for the country, he said. “People of the Bengali-origin living in Pakistan, mostly in Karachi, had never accepted Bangladesh as their country and they were completely loyal to Pakistan.”

Muhammad Sami, 68, a resident of Macchar Colony who attended the rally, said that the third generation of Bengali people was living in the country but they were not being accepted as the “sons of the soil”.

“We were born here, we will die and will be buried here and nobody has the right to call us migrants or aliens because we are Pakistanis to the core of our heart,” he said. Shakil-ul Islam, 24, a resident of Ali Akbar Shah Goth in Korangi, said that despite being from the third generation of Pakistani Bengalis and born in Karachi, the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was not issuing them CNICs, making the community vulnerable to harassment at the hands of the law enforcement agencies, particularly police.

For the Bengalis living in Karachi, the unavailability of CNICs denies them jobs and other usual perks of being Pakistani nationals, participants of the rally lamented. “We cannot open bank accounts, buy cars or buy any property,” said another participant Sami.

The participants of the rally also complained that their neighbourhoods across the city were deprived of basic civic facilities, including safe drinking water and proper sewerage system, and the community members were forced to live in filthy conditions.

Although the last census conducted in 2017 did not count the Bengali community, groups representing the community claim that there are around 1.6 million Bengalis in Karachi and most of them live in shanty towns in the city’s Korangi and Malir districts.

There are heavily Bengali-populated neighbourhoods in Ibrahim Hyderi, Arakanabad, 100 Quarters, Chashma Goth, Burmi Colony, Ali Akbar Shah Goth, and Zia Colony. Many of them also live in Ziaul Haq Colony in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Macchar Colony in Keamari, Musa Colony in FB Area and in several informal settlements in Orangi Town.