Chairman Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Tariq Malik is confident of developing e-voting system for overseas Pakistanis, provided political parties forge consensus over it.
In an interview with Voice of America’s Ali Furqan, he said that it was the right time to implement the law granting voting rights to overseas Pakistanis.
“We are waiting for two things, one is the grant of responsibility by the Election Commission to us and secondly consensus of all political parties that this e-voting system was acceptable to them,” he added.
The government recently approved legislation allowing the overseas Pakistanis to exercise the right to vote amid strong protests by the mainstream opposition parties in the Parliament.
Tarik Malik said that NADRA has data of expatriates and according to that 6.5 million people would be eligible to cast their votes out of 8.6 million overseas Pakistanis.
He also spoke about the reforms and initiatives taken by Nadra related to the digitalization of the government departments. It recently developed a system Digital Power of Attorney (DPOA) which would provide a Power of Attorney certificate to a person through video conferencing.
He added that around 10,000 fake ID cards were identified in the Nadra system and 107 employees involved in this malpractice have been terminated from service.
Malik said that smart identity cards have been issued to 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees in the country and it has facilitated them to get their children admitted in schools, open bank accounts etc.
Afghan nationals who wanted to come to Pakistan a relaxed visa regime has been implemented allowing them to get an online visa within 24 hours.
Chairman Nadra added that like the Afghan refugees, separate Identity cards were being issued to members of Bihari and Bengali communities under the National Alien Registration law.
“This will bring these people who have been living in Pakistan for decades in the mainstream circles,” he said, “At the same time it has been noted that the word alien was not appropriate so we are consulting with the Law Ministry, NGOs, and other stakeholders to replace it from their ID cards.”
Malik informed that Nadra was working to provide a national ID card as an important building block for a fully digital Pakistan, and was planning to start issuing digital ID cards by the start of next year which would help to resolve the fake ID cards issue at all.
