The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports (DGIP) has decided to link its passport application system and related services with the Pak ID mobile app, extending an integration that had already begun in a more limited form back in July 2026, when NADRA rolled out digital ID verification for passport applicants through the app. The decision was taken at a high-level meeting of senior officers chaired by Director General Immigration and Passports Muhammad Ali Randhawa, who reviewed the delivery of passport services and the progress of ongoing development initiatives. Randhawa, a Grade-20 officer of the Pakistan Administrative Service, took charge of the department in April 2026 under an extensive reform mandate from Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who directed him to introduce improvements at every level of the passport and immigration system and fully digitize operations nationwide.
Officials discussed ways to speed up the issuance and processing of passports during the meeting, along with reviewing the system for submitting new passport applications at NADRA centres and considering integrating passport facilities into the Pak ID app more broadly. This expanded integration would build on the app’s existing digital identity verification function, under which applicants without their physical Computerized National Identity Card can already confirm their identity through the digital ID available in Pak ID, both at domestic DGIP offices and at Pakistani missions abroad. Measures to make passport delivery services faster and more efficient were also examined, fitting into DGIP’s parallel push on doorstep passport delivery, which launched earlier this year in partnership with TCS as the department’s official courier service partner.
The DG directed officers to resolve citizens’ operational problems on a priority basis and to ensure transparency in all processes, signaling that the department intends to treat this integration push as part of a broader accountability drive rather than a purely technical upgrade. Pak ID has steadily expanded from a document-services app into a more comprehensive mobile identity channel over the past year, with NADRA having previously added a dematerialized national ID card, facial verification, application tracking, appointment booking, and payment functionality for its own services. The app has seen substantial adoption, with NADRA reporting more than 10 million downloads and over 1.2 million applications processed through it in a three-month period, giving DGIP a large existing user base to build the expanded passport integration on top of.
Randhawa said the department would continue to promote digital facilities, simplify procedures, and improve passport services, with the aim of providing citizens with faster and more convenient services. This latest decision extends DGIP’s digitization agenda beyond identity verification alone into a more comprehensive linking of the passport application system itself, following the department’s broader pattern this year of layering incremental digital services, from cashless payments to home delivery to Pak ID verification, onto its core passport issuance process. Whether this fuller integration meaningfully shortens passport processing times will likely depend on how quickly DGIP moves from this meeting-stage decision into an actual technical rollout, given that the underlying Pak ID infrastructure and user base are already largely in place from NADRA’s earlier work on the app.
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