KARACHI - Chairman National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA), Brig (R) Saleem Ahmed Moeen, has resigned from his post, well-placed sources confided to TheNation here on Thursday. The sources in the PM Secretariat confirmed that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has accepted Moeen's resignation though his contract was to last till August 2009.  The resignation summary said that "after a distinguished service of seven years, Chairman NADRA has resigned from his post". In August 2001, Brig (R) Saleem Ahmed Moeen was tasked to manage an almost flop project, which he effectively run despite many hurdles. Issuance of Computerized National Identity Cards was a challenging task, which seemed impossible especially when the CNICs being printed, were full of errors due to incorrect data. NADRA started its operations in October 2001 and, with only a simple computerized system, issued around 65 million cards to citizens. Brig (R) Moeen introduced the concept of NADRA Swift Registration Centre (NSRC) and Mobile Registration Vans (MRV) especially for rural populace registration, which proved to be the real turning point to correct data entry mistakes. By the end of 2004, NADRA became the first organization in the world to integrate Facial Recognition and an Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in the CNICs. During his tenure, NADRA launched several projects like Utility Bill Payment Kiosks and E-Sahulat, E-Toll systems for Motorways and world's first Multi-Biometric Machine Readable Passport System under which so far around 6.5 million passports have been issued. The government awarded him Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Civil) in 2006 for rendering meritorious services in this field besides he also secured international award, Cardex 2007, in Egypt for his outstanding achievement.