Karachi: Ten months ago, the Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) of 52-year-old Qamar-ul-Hasan, a resident of Landhi’s Majeed Colony, expired and the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) refused to renew his registration as a Pakistani citizen.
Since then, Hasan has been unemployed because everywhere he goes, the potential employers demand an identification document.
In fact, Hasan is among thousands of other residents of Majeed Colony where migrants from East Pakistan came to settle in the 1970s.
“The identification of people who migrated before or after 1970 from Eastern Pakistan has been blocked by Nadra. When we approach them, they ask for documents issued between 1970 and 1979, such as the repatriation certificate and ration card,” Hasan told The News.
Double migration : More than a million Urdu-speakers from the present-day Indian provinces of Bihar, Uttar Pardesh and West Bengal moved to East Pakistan before, during and after the partition of 1947.
“Our ancestors decided to move to East Pakistan since West Pakistan was very far from where our family used to live,” said 62-year-old Shamim Hussain who is a resident of Orangi Town, which is another locality where the Bihari community lives in large numbers.
Since a large part of the Bihari community was pro-Pakistan and opposed the creation of Bangladesh, they faced widespread discrimination and violence back home.
Meanwhile, around half a million Biharis who had chosen to stay behind in former East Pakistan, kept moving to Pakistan gradually because of the violence back home.
In 1974, the Pakistani government decided to absorb migrants from East Pakistan as nationals. Though the government repatriated about 1,70,000 Biharis back to Bangladesh in three phases between 1972 and 1992, each time it was done with greater reluctance.
“Those who arrived in 1974 under the repatriation agreement had repatriation certificates. But others who came before or after, between late 1970s and late 1980s, were not given any such documents,” Hussain told The News.
A large majority of the Biharis who migrated to Pakistan were settled in Karachi, but the government had also attempted to rehabilitate them in other provinces. But all of them gradually moved to Karachi because of family connections.
Most of the Bihari population of Karachi resides in Orangi Town, Majeed Colony, Sector 36-B Landhi, Bahadurabad, New Karachi and Surjani Town areas.
However, given that there has been no nationwide population census for over a decade and the inherent difficulties in differentiating the community from the general Urdu-speaking population of Karachi, there remains no concrete figure pertaining to their actual number in the city. Community leaders, though, believe that there are approximately 1.2 million to 1.5 million Biharis living in the metropolis presently.
CNIC issue: For the Biharis living in Karachi the unavailability of CNICs, denies them job opportunities and other usual perks of being Pakistani nationals. They can’t open bank accounts, buy cars or get them registered or buy any property.
According to Feroz Khan, a newly-elected chairman of the Majeed Colony Union Committee, most residents of his constituency were Biharis who had raised and educated their children. “The parents have old CNICs but Nadra is neither renewing their identity cards nor issuing documents to their children,” he said while talking to The News. Since very few people could obtain a good job without an identity card, the Majeed Colony on the whole is a low-income neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, interviews with Nadra officials in Karachi confirmed that the registration authority has intensified its exercise of identifying “aliens” among the CNIC holders. Hence, the authority has either blocked or refused to renew thousands of CNICs because of their “suspicious” status. Most of the refused citizens are Afghans but in Karachi, a large number of people are also from Bangladesh.
A senior official of Nadra who wanted to stay anonymous told The News that the registration authority had been asking the Bihari community to show government documents issued in early 1980s, including the repatriation certificate and ration card.
He said Nadra had constituted verification committees comprising members of law-enforcement agencies including the police, Special Branch, Intelligence Bureau and the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) in each region for scrutinising the “doubtful” CNIC cases so no alien or illegal migrant could obtain a Pakistani identity card through fake documentation.
“Nadra has a well-integrated system and has all relevant records, even the ration cards and the cards issued by the National Alien Registration Authority (NARA) back in the 1970s,” said the official.
However, elders of the Bihari community lamented that even if they presented the documents issued to them in the 1970s, Nadra did not renew or issue identity cards.
Hasan from Majeed Colony said he had shown Nadra officials documents from 1961, the time when his father used to work in Pakistan Eastern Railways, but in vain. In fact, the Biharis in Majeed Colony also had to brave ethnic violence here when the accidental death of Bushra Zaidi in 1986 had sparked bloodshed in Karachi.
“Armed men attacked Majeed Colony and torched most of the huts. The repatriation certificates and other relevant documents issued at the time were burnt,” he said.
“It is extremely unfair because these people are true Pakistanis who rendered enormous sacrifices for the country,” remarked Khan.http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/105771-With-citizen-status-termed-suspect-future-uncertain-for-Biharis-in-Karachi
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