By Bilal Sabri
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IHC reserves judgment in Election Act 2017 case
ISLAMABAD: In a rather mysterious development, the religious status of thousands of Muslims was changed to ‘Ahmadis’ by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) on Wednesday.
NADRA officials, meanwhile, confided in Pakistan Today that the authority had not changed the religious status of any Muslim to Ahmadi, adding that it might have been corrected as mentioned and maintained by the Ahmadi people in oaths.
“Earlier, there was no criterion. Ahmadis used to submit an affidavit in which they state that due to NADRA’s mistake their religious status was mentioned as Muslim, which is incorrect and they wanted to rectify it. Upon which, the authority entertained their applications and ‘corrected’ their religious status,” the officials added.
They said that NADRA had now recommended the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to make court decree mandatory for change and correction of the religious status.
However, Kamran Amjad Kayani, an IHC advocate, on March 1 sent a legal notice to the NADRA chairman, seeking an explanation as to how the subordinate staff of the national database changed the religious status of people from Muslim to non-Muslim (Ahmadi) without obtaining the court decree, which was ‘gross misconduct on the part of NADRA management’.
“You have to explain your position in this regard within seven days after the receipt of this legal notice; otherwise, the undersigned has the right to approach the court of law for the initiation of the criminal proceedings, as well as the constitutional jurisdiction of the IHC,” read the legal notice available with Pakistan Today.
It is pertinent to mention here that the IHC had earlier sought the population data of Ahmadis living in Pakistan since 1947.
According to the Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Arshad Mehmood Kayani, the data of the recently concluded census was being compiled and might be finalised by the end of April 2018. However, the Census 1998 figures were provided to the court, according to which the population of Ahmadis was 286,212.
Justice Siddiqui had noted that the figure showed a huge difference from the data earlier provided by NADRA.
The database authority had informed the court that just over 167,000 Ahmadis were registered in Pakistan and 10,205 changed their religious status from Muslim to Ahmadi.
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Categories: Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Asia, Islam, Pakistan