Asad Rehman Gilani, the new chairman of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), accepted additional responsibility on Friday, two days after his predecessor Tariq Malik announced his resignation.
The authority acknowledged in a tweet that Gilani, a BPS-21 officer of the Public Administration Services (PAS) who now holds the position of federal secretary for the Board of Investment (BoI), had joined the Nadra headquarters in Islamabad.
According to the report, Gilani visited various departments on his first day of work and gave instructions to the staff members on how to carry out their responsibilities effectively while maintaining uninterrupted services to the general public.
He expressed a desire to keep working to enhance the delivery of Nadra services, according to the authority.
The bureaucrat also paid a visit to the Nadra Regional Head Offices to assess operational activities, and Nadra noted that he gave the chiefs of all Nadra departments orders to keep working over the weekend in order to finish the backlog of ID card printing.
Gilani’s selection follows Malik’s abrupt departure on June 14 — one year before the end of his three-year term.
He presented his resignation to the Prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, during their meeting. The dispute surrounding the disclosure of information about the army chief’s family, which prompted Malik to take action against some personnel, had occurred months prior.
“I am finding it more and more challenging to work in a polarised and volatile political environment. The three-page resignation, reviewed by Dawn, stated that it was challenging for any professional to preserve his integrity and independence in a setting that consistently pits people against one another and favors political loyalty above talent.
Malik also begged the prime minister in his letter of resignation to choose a qualified professional and technical person as his successor rather than a current or former bureaucrat.
Nadra could not afford any more political experimentation, he had added, adding that the company deserved a thorough professional with a background in technology and management.
In June 2021, the PTI-run government reappointed Malik as Nadra’s chairman. After news broke that some authority figures had been implicated in leaking the personal information of the army leader and his family, he reportedly came under intense pressure from the interior minister to leave.
However, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah claimed in a news conference a day earlier that the Nadra chairman’s resignation had nothing to do with the problem of data leaks.
He insisted that there was no pressure on him to leave and said that all those responsible for the data leak had already been punished.