ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee was informed on Thursday that the policy to grant Pakistani nationality to foreigners was under review and that applications based on marriage were not being processed for the time being.

Interior Ministry’s Additional Secretary Fazal Abbas Maken told the Senate Standing Committee on Interior that the policy had been misused by some Indians and Afghans and cases would not be processed until a new policy was formulated.

Under the Pakistan Citizenship Act, 1951, foreign women married to Pakistani men are entitled to the country’s nationality, but foreign men married to Pakistani women do not enjoy the same privileges.

The Senate committee was informed that disciplinary action had been taken against 372 suspected employees of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) for issuing computerised national identity cards (CNICs) to Afghan nationals.

The committee was told that the Inter Services Intelligence had forwarded a list of 1,772 CNICs issued to Afghan nationals, along with names of 29 Nadra employees who were allegedly involved in the scam.

A preliminary scrutiny, however, revealed that CNICs of even some genuine citizens had been included in the list and a decision had been taken to carry out the necessary verification exercise by the regional offices concerned.

The verification exercise is still under way and disciplinary action against the Nadra employees found guilty will be taken as and when the scrutiny work is completed.

Mr Maken told the committee that incomplete record was causing a delay in the verification of arms licences. He said a part of the record was burnt and some files could not be traced for other reasons.

He said the missing files had been summoned from the district coordination officers concerned.

The arms licences issued by Nadra for one year had automatically been revalidated, he said but added that these had been issued provisionally against old booklets and verification was still required.

Senator Shahi Syed informed the committee that he had been granted a Kalashnikov licence back in 1986 and he had been getting it renewed from the National Bank of Pakistan since then. He said a provisional licence had been issued to him by Nadra, but it could not be verified even after passage of a long time.

He said former president Asif Ali Zardari had gifted to him a sub-machine gun along with a certificate to this effect. But the licence for the gun had yet to be issued.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2015

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