PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the attorney general and National Database and Registration Authority’s chairman seeking their response to plea of a Pakistani woman requesting for issuance of Pakistan Origin Card (POC) to her Afghan husband.

A bench consisting of Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Ijaz Anwar issued the order after preliminary hearing of a petition filed by the woman, Zara Iqbal, seeking directives of the court for Nadra to issue the POC to her husband, Attiqur Rehman, under section 11 of the Nadra Act 2007 and Rule 4(5) of the Nadra Pakistan Origin Card Rules 2002.

She also requested the court to declare as illegal the non-issuance of the POC to her husband.

Advocate Ziaur Rehman Tajik appeared for the petitioner and stated that his client was a permanent resident of Mardan district and she married Attiqur Rehman in 2016.

He stated that the petitioner’s husband was a pharmacist by profession and had been working in a private pharmaceutical firm in Peshawar. He said the couple had been living together since 2016.

Mr Tajik stated that after marriage the petitioner applied to Nadra for grant of POC to her husband, but the respondents including Nadra delayed the matter on one pretext or another and finally in 2022 it declined to issue the POC.

He argued that it was the basic human right of every woman to marry a person of her choice and such right was recognised by Islam as well as constitution of Pakistan.

He argued that section 10(2) of the Pakistan Citizenship Act, 1951, was a discriminatory provision of law as under it the wife of a Pakistani national was entitled to country’s citizenship, but the same was denied to the foreign husband of a Pakistani woman.

He referred to a judgment of the Lahore High Court arguing that the court had declared the said provision of Citizenship Act discriminatory and violative of Article 25 of the Constitution.

Moreover, he argued that the Federal Shariat Court had also declared in 2008 the said provision repugnant to the injunctions of the Holy Quran and Sunnah and called it discriminatory against gender equality and a violation of articles 2(a) and 25 of the Constitution.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2023