The Senate's Standing Committee on Interior and Narcotics Control on Thursday expressed anger over the huge backlog of passport applications and moved a privilege motion against the secretary of the Ministry of Interior and Director-General (DG) of Immigration and Passports for not attending the meeting.
The committee members said that people, including students, patients, Hajj pilgrims and Pakistanis residing abroad were facing serious problems because of the delay in getting their passports. The meeting was presided over by Senator Muhammad Talha Mehmood and attended by Senators Sardar Fateh Muhammad Muhammad Hassani, Shahi Syed, Tahir Hussain Mashhadi and Begum Najma Hameed, Director-General (DG) of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Mir Alam Khan, Inspector-General (IG) of Police Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Akbar Khan Hoti and other senior officials.
The committee moved a privilege motion against Secretary Interior Khawja Muhammad Siddique Akbar, DG Immigration and Passports Wajid Bukhari for not attending the meeting. Senator Muhammad Talha Mehmood said that the privilege committee will take strict action against these officials. He said that the committee had the power to suspend these officials.
The committee also issued to directives to officials of NADRA, Intelligence Bureau and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Police to form a committee for devising a policy for verifying cases relating to registration of aliens as well as verification of CNICs issued to aliens.
Talha Mehmmod said that issuance of CINCs to a large number of aliens in the country was a serious issue and a major factor behind the rising terrorism in the country. "Intelligence agencies have recovered from a number of aliens CNICs and during investigations they confessed that they are aliens," he said. Senator Tahir Mashhadi said that most of the agencies, including ISI, IB, Special Branch, NADRA, should be involved in the verification of aliens otherwise verification through one agency or department will facilitate provision of speedy citizenship to aliens. He also said that strict action should be taken against officials who facilitated in declaring aliens as Pakistani citizens.
Mir Alam Khan said that over the past five years, NADRA had sent 6,415 cases of alien registration to IB. Of the total, IB verified 1,459 as Pakistan nationals, 1,103 cases were declared aliens and 3,853 cases were still pending. Similarly, 63,010 cases had been sent to the Special Branch of KPK Police, of which 22,156 had so far been verified, 27,473 declared aliens and 13,381 cases were pending.
He said that NADRA did not issue CNICs to alins. Registration of aliens was responsibility of National Alien Registration Authority (NARA). However, some aliens succeeded in obtaining CNICs on the basis of fake documents and attestations. Most cases were processed prior to the implementation of multi-biometric system in 2006. Mir Alam said that aliens/refugees were living in Pakistan for the past 30 years. Movement of such aliens was not restricted to camps. Fake documents such as domiciles, birth certificates, educational certificates were easily obtained. Aliens, he said, got their applications for CNICs attested without disclosing their true identities. To mitigate such risks, NADRA adopted multiple methodologies to restrain aliens from getting registered.
He said that so far, NADR had identified 14,034 aliens who succeeded in obtaining CNICs prior to the induction of biometric system. Of the total, 3,245 in KPK, 1,729 in Punjab, 1,816 in Balochistan, 6,750 in Sindh, 136 in Islamabad, 304 in Fata, 49 in Azad Kashmir and five of them had been identified in Gilgit-Baltistan. Records of 159,608 cards had been blocked by the National Identification System (NIS) system.
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