[1][2] Lieutenant General Muhammad Munir Afsar serves as Chairman of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Pakistan.

[7][4] So the Bhutto regime introduced a national registration act in the Parliament of Pakistan to establish an authority to issue photo IDs to all registered Pakistani citizens.

Registration of Pakistan's citizens and statistic database in government's computer accounts was started in 1973, with the promulgation of the Constitution of the country.

NADRA is an autonomous body to operate independently with the mandate to replace the old directorate general of Registration with a computerised system of registering 150 million citizens, NADRA launched the Multi-Biometric National Identity Card project developed in conformance with international security documentation issuance practices in the year 2000.

To date, over 96 million citizens in Pakistan and abroad have utilised the system and its allied services to receive tamper-resistant ISO standard Identification Documents.

In Pakistan, all adult citizens must register for the Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) with a unique number upon reaching the age of 18.

Today, the Government has shifted all its existing records of National Identity Cards (NIC) to the central computerised database managed by NADRA.

[7] Every citizen is required to have a NIC number, and the number is required for many activities such as getting a driver licence or passport, registering a vehicle, receiving social insurance/Zakat funding, enrolling in school, college or technical institute,[7] filing a legal affidavit, wiring funds, paying taxes, opening/operating a bank account, getting a utility connection (electricity, phone, mobile phone, water and sewer, natural gas), obtaining an alcohol permit for non-Muslim citizens, registering a marriage or divorce etc.

[citation needed] In 2007, NADRA announced that it had issued 60 million CNIC (the C standing for computerised) numbers, which is approximately one-third of the population.

Intriguingly, the CNIC is not just a random string of numbers; each of the 13 digits plays a unique role in providing information about the cardholder.

The first digit represents the province, with numbers assigned as follows: 1 for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2 for FATA, 3 for Punjab, 4 for Sindh, 5 for Balochistan, 6 for Islamabad, 7 for Gilgit-Baltistan, and 8 for Kashmir.

The SNIC can be used for both offline and online identification, voting, pension disbursement, social and financial inclusion programmes and other services.

Especially, those Pakistanis who are expats can take advantage of this facility, being offered by NADRA.Online Application[13][14] As of June 22, 2021, NADRA has started issuance of succession certificate / letter of administration in Karachi, Sindh.