Sultan Masjid’s Imam takes NADRA to court for ‘blocking’ his CNIC

Sindh High Court asks authority to submit report by May 2.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court, while hearing a petition filed by the prayer leader for Sultan Masjid in Defence Housing Authority, Qari Munir Ahmed, directed the National Database and Regulatory Authority (Nadra) to submit a report with regard to blocking his national identity card.

Qari Munir had gone to court against the interior ministry’s secretary and NADRA’s director general for allegedly illegally blocking his national identity card. According to Qari Munir, he has been the Imam at Sultan Masjid for the last 26 years. He had applied for the renewal of his passport, which was expiring on July 2, 2010, but was told by his officials that his CNIC was blocked.

His lawyer, Khawaja Naveed Ahmed, told the judges that when the petitioner contacted NADRA, he came to know that certain people, who had leveled allegations against Qari Munir for delivering a sermon about the blasphemy law, had pressured the government to block his ID card.

The lawyer said his client needed a renewed passport so that he could go abroad for performing Umrah, but his request could not be processed till his CNIC was unblocked.

“The allegations were baseless,” the lawyer contended Khawaja asked the judges to order NADRA to clear the petitioner’s ID card immediately and issue his renewed passport. On Tuesday, the authority’s lawyer, Zulfiqar Solangi, requested for time to furnish the report regarding blocking the petitioner’s ID card. Allowing time, the bench headed by Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, directed him to submit the report by May 2.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2013.