NADRA lawsuit: IHC issues notices to Nisar, 13 others

NADRA’s lawyer Raza Kazim maintains Nisar had “seriously damaged organisation's reputation through false...

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) issued notices to Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the chief secretary of Punjab and the station house officer (SHO) of the Civil Lines Police Station along with 11 other respondents. The notices were issued after the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) filed a damages suit worth Rs10 billion against them.

While hearing the case, Justice Riaz Khan sought a reply from the respondents over the lawsuit and adjourned the case till February 2012.

During the course of the hearing, NADRA’s lawyer Raza Kazim maintained that Nisar had “seriously damaged the reputation of the organisation through false allegations”.

“The allegations have affected several of NADRA’s international agreements, causing it losses worth millions of dollars,” maintained Kazim during the preliminary hearing.

PML-N’s Chaudhry Nisar served a legal notice in March on NADRA, in which he alleged that Mobile Registration Vehicles (MRVs) deployed in the Bahria Town housing scheme had issued fake identity cards at the behest of “certain elements”, implicated to be property tycoon Malik Riaz. The housing scheme lies within NA-52 in Rawalpindi, which is considered PML-N’s home constituency.

On these identity cards, temporary addresses of settlers living in NA-52 were changed, so that they appeared to be permanent residents of the constituency. Allegedly, this was meant to influence the next general elections by making ‘permanent’ residents voters in NA-52.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2011.