Face off: ‘But we already issued you a CNIC. Didn’t we?’

Nadra officials say they can’t issue the CNIC because Akifa has a doppelganger.

SIALKOT:

National Data and Registration Authority (Nadra) officials in Daska have refused to issue a computerised national identity card (CNIC) to a local resident because of her close resemblance to a Lahori resident.

According to Nadra officials, they rejected an application for a CNIC on Wednesday, because the young woman in question closely resembled a Lahore resident.

“Until we can confirm that it is not the same person we cannot issue the card. We scanned her picture into our records and there was a nearly identical match to a woman in Lahore,” said CNIC issuing department official Raza Khan.

Spearking to reporters on Wednesday, Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) leader Haji Muhammad Sadiq said that his unmarried daughter Akifa Sadiq had applied for CNIC on July 1, 2011 with urgent fees.

“It had been months and we still hadn’t heard back about the ID card so we approached the office.

When we asked them why she wasn’t being given a card they said that she was posing to be someone else,” he said.

“When I objected they showed me the picture of the other card holder and even I had to admit that she was nearly identical to my daughter.

This doesn’t mean that my daughter shouldn’t get an ID card,” Sadiq said.

Nadra officials said that they had sent Akifa’s documents to the main NADRA headquarters in Islamabad but Islamabad officials had also refused to issue the CNIC on the same grounds.

“It is not my fault that I appear identical to this person. I have asked them to check her particulars and mine and send someone to verify that I am not posing as her but they have refused,” Akifa said.

“They made me wait four months and didn’t even tell me the cause of the problem. Now they are refusing to issue me an ID card. How can I function without a CNIC?” she told reporters.

“We are investigating the other card holder in Lahore as well as Akifa’s records but it will take some time,” Raza said.

“We cannot issue an ID card for two people with exactly the same face and Akifa told us that she did not have a twin,” he said.

“This is ridiculous. They cannot make me suffer because someone else in the country happens too look just like me,” she added.

Akifa and her father have appealed to the chief minister and Nadra authorities to resolve the matter as soon as possible.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2011.