'How many are Pakistanis and how many are aliens amongst us?' constitutes a lingering enigma - but hopefully until now. The people have been asked by the government to check with the Nadra if any outsider is included in their family trees (family records). And we know these unrelated outsiders are many, perhaps they are in millions. Of the 400,000 who checked up with Nadra since the launch of the CNIC re-verification drive recently the authority has received 13,000 complaints regarding registration of aliens in their family trees. On scrutiny it was found that one-third of these are confirmed aliens. Given that ratio of the aliens amongst us they could be many millions. How many of them acquired have Pakistani passports, travelled abroad and sometimes got involved in terrorist activities that is certainly a challenge entailing enormous implications for Pakistan. Perhaps this re-verification of CNCIs should have been done long before, but now that it has been undertaken it should be taken to its logical conclusion. Indeed we have porous borders, a welcoming people to host refugees and we are also grossly unguarded at the entry points. But it is also true that many non-Pakistanis have bought Pakistani nationality with hard cash.
So, how will this campaign to trace out aliens amongst us conclude we would keep our fingers crossed. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali appears to be determined that the CNIC drive is result-oriented and the aliens thus identified are removed from the Nadra's database. But what then. Will the aliens be asked to leave Pakistan? That appears to be nearly impossible, for we have known since ages that tens of thousands of Bangladeshis and other South Asians have taken homes in Karachi and about a one million Afghans have refused to be registered as refugees and pose themselves as Pakistani nationals. Then there is also the question how authentic is the Nadra database, when we haven't counted how many we are for almost two decades and quite a few haven't registered with it. Various government departments have their own figures about the national population. And also, the family trees are in accordance with Form-B of the National Registration Act 1973, under which the ID numbers are different from the ones allotted by the Nadra. One more problem: the CNIC almost invariably carries both permanent and present addresses which in many cases are not the same. In some cases the domestic help like cooks, drivers and housemaids are also registered at places where they are employed. And what someone hasn't the mobile phone to send an SMS to the Nadra or isn't aware of this CNIC verification campaign. Therefore, only a drive to re-verify CNIC may not be enough to weed out aliens from amongst us; there has to be a multipronged approach to the issue of verifying national identity, and this may include a penal doze as a deterrent against its misrepresentation also. That this is basically a 'national security drive' is a fact and one would have no beef with this idea. The national population census must be held without any further loss of time. Once we know how many we are rest of the related issues would be easy to handle.