KARACHI, Aug 4: The federal authorities have decided to conduct a crackdown on the illegal immigrants, violating the registration laws of the country by deliberately avoiding registration with the National Aliens Registration Authority.

A meeting, held a couple of days back, and attended by the officials of the National Database & Registration Authority (Nadra), National Aliens Registration Authority (Nara), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the Ministry of Interior, Sindh Home Department, Police and other departments concerned, taking cognizance of the violations of registration laws, decided to come up with stringent measures against the violators.

The sources in interior ministry told the PPI that the crackdown would focus especially on about 1.3 million illegal Bengalis and Burmese, besides hitting other unregistered aliens settled in the country.

The estimated number of Bengalis, mostly settled in Karachi, was said to be 1.1 million, while, reportedly, there were 0.2 million Burmese all over the country. During the last one and a half year, hardly 26,000 aliens, including Afghan refugees, had got them registered with Nara, the sources said.

The measures would also include registration of cases against the government officials and councillors, involved in illegal verifications of the aliens as citizens of Pakistan. Besides, in future, no document other than that of citizenship, would be accepted by the authorities, the sources said.

The sources disclosed that currently about 38,000 applications of Bengalis, for computerized national identity cards, have been withheld by Nadra, while adding that about 6,000 cases of attesting and verifying fake documents were to be registered.

According to the strategy, Nadra would refer the cases to the FIA for action against the persons involved in attesting fake or forged registration documents of aliens, the sources said.—PPI