Passport office Karachi: one-stop centre for passport, CNIC and arms licence planned

Karachi will get what Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi calls Pakistan's largest public facilitation centre, where passport, CNIC, arms licence and no-objection certificate (NOC) services will sit under one roof. Naqvi announced it on Tuesday 29 September 2026 during a visit to the Interior Ministry's Karachi office on I.I. Chundrigar Road, and gave officials 10 days to submit a master plan, which puts the deadline around 9 October.

No site, opening date or cost has been announced yet.

What the centre will offer

According to Dawn and Business Recorder, the "Grand Facilitation Centre" will bring together the counters of every department and organisation that works under the Interior Ministry. That means one visit for:

• Passports (Directorate General of Immigration and Passports)
• CNIC, B-Form and family registration (NADRA)
• Arms licences
• NOCs issued by Interior Ministry departments

For people in Karachi who now queue at a passport office in one part of the city and a NADRA centre in another, the main change would be one queue and one address.

Why it matters now

Passport demand is about to rise. Machine-readable passports are being phased out from 15 October, and the e-passport costs between Rs 9,000 and Rs 40,500 depending on pages and delivery speed (our report). Work out your fee before you go with our passport fee calculator, and check CNIC, smart card and NICOP charges with the NADRA fee calculator.

What to do until it opens

Nothing changes for now. Keep using the existing passport offices and NADRA centres in Karachi, and book or check tokens online where the service allows it. We will update this page when the master plan, location and opening date are announced.

Also announced

Naqvi also said 21 new rescue and firefighting vehicles for Islamabad Rescue 1122 and the fire brigade, including aerial trucks that work at heights of up to 256 feet, had arrived at Karachi Port from China and would reach the capital within five days.