CNIC (Pakistan)
identity document of Pakistan
The computerised national identity card (CNIC) (Urdu: قومی شناختی کارڈ, romanised: qaumī śanāxtī kārḍ) is an identity card with a unique 13-digit number available to all adult citizens of Pakistan and their diasporic counterparts, obtained voluntarily. It includes biometric data such as 10 fingerprints, 2 iris prints, and a facial photo. The process of data collection and card issuance is conducted by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), an autonomous body under the Federal Ministry of Interior, with the requisite autonomy to collect and maintain data independently.
The CNIC includes details such as legal name, gender (male, female, or transgender), father's name (or husband's name for married women), identification mark, date of birth, national ID card number, family tree ID number, current and permanent addresses, issue and expiry dates, signature, photo, and thumbprint (fingerprint).
Though not mandatory by law, the CNIC is essential for numerous transactions in Pakistan, including voting, passport applications, land and vehicle purchases, driver's license acquisition, ticket bookings, mobile SIM card acquisition, utility services access, education and healthcare access, and financial transactions.
History
Efforts to establish a national ID system in Pakistan began in 1973, following the enactment of Article 30 of the Second Amendment. This initiative aimed to collect demographic data, addresses, photographs, and thumb impressions from citizens for the purpose of maintaining a statistical database. However, the process relied on physical files and lacked the adoption of emerging technologies by the Directorate General of Registration. As a result, the government's ability to provide a reliable document for ID verification was limited.
In 1999 the Pakistan Army, tasked with conducting a nationwide census, began considering merging two institutions: the Directorate General of Registration, responsible for issuing national ID cards, and the National Database Organization, established in 1998 for census purposes.
The public source identifies “CNIC (Pakistan)” as identity document of Pakistan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around CNIC, Pakistan and identity.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5157602. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1999 and 1998.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “CNIC (Pakistan)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.