NADRA has blocked more than 40,000 CNICs issued to foreign nationals since 2005, which includes citizens from China, Burma, U.S, India, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Maldives and Morocco.
Overall, 0.23 million national ID cards have been blocked by NADRA in 5 years according to Federal Interior Minister Chauhdry Nisar. These were either issued to Pakistanis or to foreigners. The officials assigned to investigate it claimed that majority of the blocked ID cards were issued to “unregistered Afghan refugees” with tens of thousands of ID cards issued by at least 650 officials of Nadra, with over 108 from regional office from Karachi alone.
An official document revealed that they have issued these ID cards to 29 Indians, 21 Chinese, 236 Iranians, one American, 111 Burmese and Bengali, seven Moroccan, three Uzbeks, two Maldivians, one Senegal citizen, 13 Egyptian and north of 40,000 Afghanis.
When asked, Nadra claimed that it had blocked over 40,000 ID cards since 2005.
This seems like a part of a broader initiative by NADRA to weed out potential terrorist threats or illegal immigrants which may pose a threat to the balance of society. Of course, the process isn’t perfect as because of it some legitimate Pakistani citizens also had their ID cards blocked, like when the biometric verification process was started by NADRA for similar purposes last year.
