ISLAMABAD (Staff Report) – Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has stated that online registration and issuance of passport would begin from April next year.
While responding to a question in the National Assembly, he said that initially the online system would be introduced within the country and at a later stage it would be expanded to cover other countries as well. Presently, 83 Pakistani missions abroad are issuing machine readable passports.
He said somewhere in the middle of next year, online applications for passports would be received by our missions abroad.
The Minister said the discretionary power of the Interior Minister to relax rules for issuance of Blue Passports was misused in the past and the present Government cancelled two thousand passports on the questionable excuse of public interest.
Chaudhry Nisar said online application and issuance of national identity cards has already begun but the process would take few months more to consolidate.
The Minister said hundreds of thousands of fake identity cards have been revoked and action taken against officials concerned of NADRA.
Replying to a supplementary about blocking of identity cards, the Minister said a Committee consisting of members representing different parliamentary parties would be formed to sort out the issue with NADRA.
