Motives questioned: NADRA altered report under govt pressure, says PTI

Authority fends off allegations, insists no tampering was made

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has accused the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) of succumbing to government pressure and tampering its own report regarding investigations into the NA-122 constituency in Lahore.

On Saturday, the party’s chairman Imran Khan issued a statement, questioning NADRA chief’s decision to embark on a foreign visit instead of making an appearance before the election tribunal. “NADRA has altered some of its own findings in this supplementary report [NA-122],” he alleged.

Imran pointed out that the tribunal had asked NADRA to submit enhanced scanned images and not a supplementary report. There is no precedent for submission of a supplementary report before the election tribunal yet NADRA did exactly that, he said.

The PTI chief said that NADRA chief Usman Mobin was supposed to appear before the Election Tribunal on Saturday but he suddenly informed the tribunal that he was going abroad on an official visit for almost two weeks.”

NADRA’s response

In response, a spokesperson for NADRA said that the visit had been scheduled two months in advance and the chairman had postponed his visit in order to appear before the judicial inquiry commission.

In response to a question, he said that the acting head of NADRA would appear before the election tribunal.

He said that Chairman Usman Mobin had appeared before the tribunal on May 16. However, the PTI lawyer did not cross-examine him.


Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2015.