July 04, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 29, 1429

ISLAMABAD, July 3: The National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) has included more security features in Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) after which photograph of the card holder will remain invisible in case a colour photo copy is made.

He said that in case of a black and white photocopy, the picture of the card holder will remain visible on the photo copy.

We have included the new feature in the card after the colour photocopy facility increased the misuse of the card and fraud cases came to light,” Nadra chairman Brig (retd) Saleem Ahmed Moeen told reporters at here on Thursday.

Modern photo copy machines can produce copies of any document with same colours and sometime it becomes very difficult to differentiate between genuine and copied documents. It is a general practice that most of the people do not keep original CNICs because of fear of loss and usually take with them colour photo copies of CNICs.

“Nadra cannot stop people from preparing fake CNICs because it is the duty of security departments but the authority can only stop the use of fake cards by its strong database and security system,” Nadra chief said.

Referring to a news report that robbery suspect Khalid Saeed Gil, who was arrested last week in Karachi with two CNICs issued by Nadra in his possession, Mr Moeen admitted Nadra’s fault in the case, but said the two cards had been issued in 2002 and 2003 when the authority had not made a family tree.

He said that even then, on his second attempt, the applicant had been declared suspect by the Nadra system and his card application blocked but there was no fake information in the second application and he was issued a new card on ‘humanitarian grounds’.

He said Nadra had acquired the modern security system in 2005 and because of it no one could get more than one CNIC.

“Since the adoption of the new system, some 300 to 400 attempts to get a duplicate CNICs are being foiled every day. We do not take a legal action, otherwise police will have no place to keep thousands of offenders,” he said.

Mr Moeen said the authority had received no significant response from the people after the introduction of free CNIC cards.

“We were expecting an influx of applicants, but the response was the same as it used to be before the launching of the scheme.”