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Fatima V. National Database and Registration Authority through Director General,

PLD 2022 Balochistan 73 · Balochistan High Court

Fatima went to court after the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) refused to renew her expired computerized national identity card (CNIC), telling her the card had been blocked. She had originally obtained a manual identity card and then a CNIC after her marriage in 1984, and had also secured her children's B-Forms through NADRA. When renewal was refused, she sued for a declaration and related relief. The trial court ruled in her favor, but an appellate court later overturned that decision and dismissed her suit. She then challenged that appellate ruling in the Balochistan High Court.

The High Court sided with Fatima. It held that since NADRA itself had earlier registered her and issued her a CNIC after verifying all legal requirements, the authority could not later block her card without proof that she was not a Pakistani citizen. As someone who was a citizen by birth, she was automatically a citizen of Pakistan, and the burden was on NADRA to prove otherwise rather than rely on vague verbal claims. The court emphasized that blocking a CNIC without notice or hearing was arbitrary and violated fundamental rights, since a blocked CNIC effectively strips a person of access to education, health, employment and other basic rights protected under the Constitution. The court restored the original decree in Fatima's favor.

This case matters because it reaffirms that identity card blockages cannot be done arbitrarily or without due process, and that citizenship rights, once recognized, cannot be stripped away by unsupported administrative action.

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