NADRA puts blame on NARA for not documenting foreign immigrants

Court orders to add latter as party in the proceedings for delay in issuing passport.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court expressed displeasure over the poor performance of the National Aliens Registration Authority (NARA) in properly documenting thousands of foreign immigrants, especially those residing in Karachi.

Chief Justice Mushir Alam, who headed the bench, has ordered the office to add NARA as party in petitions filed by various persons who accused the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) of not issuing computerised passports or national identity cards to them due to their parents being Bengalis.

One such person, Abdul Kalam, has taken the interior ministry, the Federal Investigation Agency’s deputy director and director of Passports and Immigration, and the NADRA chairperson to the court.

Kalam said that his parents used to live in former East Pakistan (Bangladesh), but he was born in Karachi.

A resident of Manghopir, the petitioner maintained that he has been running his own business under the name of Pakistan Boiler Chemicals for many years and possessed a Pakistani computerised ID card and old passport. In November 2010, he applied for a computerised passport, which has yet to be issued for the reasons best known to the officers.



He pleaded to the court to direct the interior ministry, the FIA and NADRA officials to provide him the computerised passport at the earliest.

The other side

Refuting the petitioner’s claim, a lawyer representing NADRA, Zulfiqar Solangi, produced a letter of the controller, Central Data Registration Organisation Karachi, which stated that the petitioner’s Manual ID card numbers were neither available nor traceable. “These are manufactured to favour unauthorised persons,” he added.

The lawyer alleged that the petitioner’s passport showed his place of birth as Chittagong, while another passport showed that he was born in Karachi. “It clearly demonstrated that he has manipulated the documents,” he added.

He went on to say that the National Aliens Registration Authority is responsible for registering people of different nationalities who have found their way in Karachi. “Such people are only issued NARA cards to use as a work permit. But the NARA is not performing its duty which is causing difficulty for NADRA,” he complained to the judges.

Taking notice on the NADRA lawyer’s complaint, the judges directed the office to add NARA as party in the proceedings as such matters were frequently being brought to the court.

“We would like to treat this matter as a public interest matter,” remarked Justice Mushir, while directing the NADRA’s lawyer to provide a list of all those petitions pending where NARA is involved and all such petitioners should come up on the next date before the same bench.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2013.