Minister for Interior, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said that a deadline has been set to re-verify all Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) in six months. The move came in the wake of disclosure that slain Taliban chief Mullah Mansoor was a registered Pakistani national.
According to reports NADRA would be re-verifying CNICs of around 25 million families. Smiliar campaign initiated by PTA last year when re-verification of cellular mobile SIMs took place, 120 million mobile connections were verified through biometric procedure to curb the use of illegal SIMs. Process took many months to complete the job. Similarly this year, authorities have decided to put citizen through same process once again, this time its CNIC re-verification. It would be very hard job for the citizen to visit NADRA offices for re-verification purposes because in normal routine people stand for hours in queue to get their work done.
NADRA has biometrically verified data of all issued CNICs, using it all illegal identity cards can be discarded. But its beyond understanding that why millions of Pakistanis are being forced to face the brunt of this tedious exercise of re-verification of their CNICs.
Concerned authorities should focus to deal the real issue, and real issue is to put all energies in identifying some corrupt officials of NADRA who are responsible for issuing illegal CNICs. Recently some officials of NADRA have been held in FIA crackdown in a scam to issue hundreds of thousands of CNICs to foreigners. Following the crackdown, the authorities have blocked over 112,000 CNICs in just five months. Instead of sidelining some officials involved in nefarious activities, putting all citizens to go through a hectic exercise is not a wise decision.
Scrutiny of corrupt officials required to stop illegal issuance of CNICs.