National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA; Urdu: نیشنل ڈیٹابیس اینڈرجسٹریشن اتھارٹی) is an independent and autonomous agency under the control of the Ministry of Interior Pakistan that regulates government databases and statistically manages the sensitive registration database of all the National Citizens of Pakistan. Lieutenant General Muhammad Munir Afsar is serving as the Chairman since 2 October 2023. NADRA is also responsible for issuing Computerised National Identity Cards to the citizens of Pakistan as well as National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis and Pakistan Origin Card for people with Pakistani Origin who do not qualify for maintaining CNIC or NICOP. NADRA employs more than 24,000 people in more than 963 domestic offices and ten international offices.
Legal Basis and Establishment NADRA was established under the National Database and Registration Authority Ordinance 2000 (Ordinance No. VIII of 2000), which was promulgated on 10 March 2000. The Ordinance repealed the National Registration Act 1973 and transferred the functions of the earlier registration bodies to the new authority.
History The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was established on 10 March 2000 through the National Database and Registration Authority Ordinance, 2000 (Ordinance No. VIII of 2000), which merged the National Database Organisation, a department created under the Ministry of Interior after the 1998 national census, with the Directorate General of Registration, a body that had operated under the National Registration Act, 1973. The new Authority was created as an independent corporate body with the mandate to replace the old manual registration system with a computerised one and to build a national citizen database. The launch of the Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) in 2001 marked the transition from manual registration to a digital citizen registry, and in October 2012 NADRA introduced the Smart National Identity Card, an electronic chip based card with enhanced security features. NADRA later launched Pak Identity, an online service that allows citizens in Pakistan and abroad to apply for identity documents remotely. Over the years its role expanded to include support for electoral rolls, and by 2012 it had removed roughly 37 million invalid entries from the voters list and added more than 36 million newly eligible adults. The authority has also administered biometric based smart card programmes for disaster relief and financial inclusion schemes, and has been internationally recognised for its identification expertise, including work on the inclusion of underregistered groups such as tribal communities, transgender persons, and women. NADRA today maintains one of the largest citizen databases in the world.
Computerised National Identity Card
The CNIC is a computerised national identity card issued by NADRA. As of 2025, more than 225 million CNICs had been issued. The CNIC is issued first at the age of 18. However, for Pakistani citizens, the CNIC is mandatory for:
Voting Opening and operating bank accounts Obtaining a passport Obtaining a domicile certificate Purchasing vehicles and land Obtaining a driver license Purchasing a plane, train, or inter-city bus ticket Obtaining a mobile phone SIM card Obtaining an electricity, landline telephone, natural gas, or water and sewerage connection Securing admission to college and other post-graduate institutes Conducting major financial transactions Setting up a business Registering a marriage or divorce Opening a PO Box Sending a packet or parcel via courier services Thus, it can be seen as a de facto necessity for meaningful civic life in Pakistan.
The Identity Card Number Each citizen is assigned a unique 13-digit number. A child first receives this number at birth when the parents complete the child registration form, known as the B Form or Child Registration Certificate. The same number is later carried on the National Identity Card issued at the age of 18.
Requirements In Pakistan, all adult citizens must register for the Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) with a unique number upon reaching the age of 18. It serves as an identification document to authenticate an individual's identity as the citizen of Pakistan. Before introduction of the CNIC, manual National Identity Cards (NICs) were issued to citizens of Pakistan. Today, the Government has shifted all its existing records of National Identity Cards (NIC) to the central computerised database managed by NADRA.
Information Shown on the Card The card displays the legal name, gender (male, female, or transgender), the father's name or the husband's name for a married woman, an identification mark, date of birth, the identity card number, the family number, current address, permanent address, date of issue, date of expiry, signature, photograph, and a fingerprint. NADRA also records the holder's religion, though this information is not printed on the card itself.
Structure
The computerised national identity card (CNIC) issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) verifies a person's Pakistani citizenship. The 13-digit ID number comprises three parts. The first part, which comprises five digits i.e. '12101', has its first digit identifying the province, second digit identifying the division, third and fourth digit identifying the district, and fifth digit identifying the tehsil. People whose CNIC number starts with 1 are residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Similarly, 2 represents FATA, 3 for Punjab, 4 for Sindh, 5 represents Balochistan, 6 for Islamabad, 7 represents Gilgit-Baltistan province and 8 represents Kashmir. The second digit in the CNIC number shows the division. Each digit identifies a different division in a province, while the rest of the three digit represent the district, tehsil and union council. The second and middle part of the CNIC number refer to the family number of a citizen. This code forms the family tree of a citizen. The third part, which has only one digit following a hyphen, represents sex. For men, odd digits i.e. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 are used, while even digits i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8 are used for women.
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