National Database and Registration Authority: What Is It?
Under the direction of the Interior Secretary of Pakistan, the National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) is an independent, self-governing organization that oversees government databases and statistically maintains the private registration database of all Pakistani nationals. The Chairman of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Pakistan is Lieutenant General Muhammad Munir Afsar.
Read More: NADRA Dienstleistungen
Additionally, NADRA is in charge of providing computerized national identity cards to Pakistani residents, protecting their private information from theft and unauthorized access, and safeguarding their national identities in government databases.[4][5] At more than 800 domestic offices and five overseas locations, it employs over 11,000 individuals, making it one of the largest government database institutions.
The Constitution of Pakistan, as amended in 2000 by §30 of the Second Amendment, gives NADRA authority to create sensitive databases and civil registration for its residents. All of these databases are maintained to guarantee the security of the information they contain.
History
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan introduced the Personal Identity System (PIS) program following Pakistan’s independence in order to register, administer, and provide national identity cards to all Pakistani residents as well as Muslim refugees who had settled in Pakistan. The Pakistani Election Commission made modifications to the voter registration procedure in 1965 in order to host the country’s first countrywide presidential election. The Election Commission carried out the PIS program modifications in 1969–1970, and it oversaw the general elections in 1970.
A new statistics database system was required to guarantee the protection of Pakistan’s residents as well as the national security of the nation[4] after the 1971 war led to East Pakistan’s independence as Bangladesh and doubts arose over who was and wasn’t a Pakistani.[7][4] In order to provide the power to provide picture IDs to all Pakistani nationals who are registered, the Bhutto dictatorship presented the National Registration Act into the Pakistani Parliament.[7][4] In 1973, the Pakistani Constitution’s Second Amendment, §30, created a new database system that housed the country’s statistical database of citizens. With the adoption of the nation’s Constitution in 1973, the government began to register its residents and compile a statistics database on them in its computer systems. Then-prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto conceived up and launched this innovative initiative.
“This country is operating in utter darkness due to the absence of full statistical database of the people of this country,” Bhutto said to the people of Pakistan during a parliamentary session in 1973.[4] The government began assigning National Identity Cards (NICs) to its residents and began compiling databases of those individuals on government computers.[4]
The Directorate General of Registration Pakistan, a department established under the 1973 Constitution, and the National Database Organization (NDO), an attached department under the Ministry of Interior, Government of Pakistan, established for the 1998 census, were merged to form the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), which was established on March 10, 2000. In order to replace the outdated directorate general of Registration with a computerized system for registering 150 million citizens, NADRA, an autonomous body with independent operations, launched the Multi-Biometric National Identity Card project in 2000. This project was developed in accordance with international security documentation issuance practices. The software took the place of Pakistan’s paper-based Personal Identity System, which had been in operation since 1973. To date, the system and its affiliated services have been used by over 96 million residents of Pakistan and other countries to get tamper-resistant ISO standard identification documents. During the tenure of former Chairman Mr. Ali Arshad Hakeem, the organization prospered.