NADRA Marriage Certificate (Computerised Nikah Nama): 2026 Guide

NADRA

Last Updated: October 2026

A NADRA marriage certificate is not issued by NADRA. Your Union Council issues it, or depending on where you live a Municipal Committee, a Cantonment Board, or in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa a Village or Neighbourhood Council, printing it from a computer system NADRA supplies. Where a fee is published it is PKR 100 to PKR 300, and the certificate takes between 3 and 7 days.

There is also no official website where you type in a CNIC and see a marriage record, whatever some sites promise. What does exist is a legal right to inspect the Union Council’s register, and a NADRA certificate that shows who it records as your spouse. Both are below, along with what MOFA asks for before it will attest the certificate for use abroad.

Nikah nama or marriage certificate: which is which

The second document goes by three names: the NADRA marriage certificate, the computerised nikah nama, and its official name, the Marriage Registration Certificate (MRC). All three mean the same printed certificate. The nikah nama itself is a different document, and mixing the two up is the most common reason people are turned away at a counter.

	Nikah nama	Marriage certificate (MRC)
What it is	The marriage contract, filled in at the nikah	The registered civil record of that marriage
Who produces it	The Nikah Registrar, or whoever performed the nikah	The Union Council or equivalent local office, from NADRA’s CRMS system
Accepted by NADRA to change marital status	No	Yes, and it is mandatory
Needed for MOFA attestation	Yes, the original	Yes, alongside the nikah nama

NADRA’s own answer leaves no room. Asked whether marital status on a CNIC can be changed without a marriage certificate, it replies: “No. A marriage certificate issued by Union Council, Cantonment Board or CDA, is a mandatory requirement to update marital status to ‘Married’ on the CNIC.” So the certificate comes first, and updating your NADRA record comes after it.

Who issues it

NADRA describes the arrangement on its own site. The civil registration system, CRMS, is “deployed across 11,000+ Union Councils” and handles the registration of births, deaths, marriages and divorces and the issue of their certificates, with NADRA providing the technology under agreements with the provincial and local governments. The local office enters your marriage and prints the certificate. NADRA runs the database behind it.

Which office that is depends on where the nikah was registered, not where you live now:

Where the nikah was registered	Who issues the certificate
Punjab	The Union Council or Municipal Committee. e-Khidmat Markaz and the Dastak doorstep service can also get it for you (see below)
Islamabad	ICT Administration, at the Citizen Facilitation Center in G-11/4
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa	The Village or Neighbourhood Council
A cantonment area	The Cantonment Board
Anywhere else	The local council that registered the nikah

Fees and processing time

There is no single national fee, because each province sets its own. These are the figures the issuing authorities publish themselves:

Where	Certificate fee	Time	Published by
Punjab, Union Council or Municipal Committee	PKR 300	About 3 working days	Punjab Local Government
Punjab, e-Khidmat Markaz	PKR 200	7 working days	e-Khidmat Markaz
Islamabad	PKR 200	7 days	ICT Administration, and NADRA’s Islamabad guidebook (13 June 2026)
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa	PKR 100, and registering the marriage is free	Within 3 working days of applying	KP registration rules, 2021
Sindh	Not published	Not published	NADRA’s Sindh guide (11 June 2026) gives deadlines and forms, not a fee
Balochistan, AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan	Not published	Not published	Ask the issuing office

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s fee schedule also sets PKR 150 for a duplicate certificate and PKR 200 for a correction. Guides around the web quote ranges running from PKR 100 up to PKR 2,000, and none of the ones we read in full said where their figures came from. If you are asked for much more than the published fee, ask what the extra covers and get a receipt for the government fee.

NADRA’s June 2026 public guides add the registration deadlines. Islamabad and Sindh both say a marriage should be registered within 30 days. In Sindh the Nikah Registrar sends the form, with the nikah nama attached, to the Union Council secretary within seven days of the nikah. A Sindh marriage registered outside the council’s limits goes to the secretary, who decides within 15 days, with an appeal to the Assistant Director Local Government within 30 days. Sindh’s Hindu marriages must be registered within 45 days, and its minimum marriage age is 18 for both spouses. NADRA’s Balochistan guide says its bye-laws cover only births and deaths, and that Muslim marriage and divorce there are registered under the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961, through the Union Council or the nikah registrar.

How to get the certificate

1. Make sure the nikah was registered. The Nikah Registrar is licensed by the Union Council, and if someone else performed the nikah, the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance requires that person to report it to the Nikah Registrar. It is still worth confirming at the Union Council, because a nikah that was never entered cannot produce a certificate.
2. Gather the documents. Punjab asks for a copy of the registered nikah nama and the CNICs of the husband and wife, with copies of their parents’ CNICs. Islamabad’s list is similar: the original nikah nama and an attested copy, CNIC copies of the bride and groom and of both their fathers, and the applicant’s own CNIC. Add a passport copy if either spouse is a foreign national.
3. Apply where the nikah was registered. The record sits with that office. Punjab’s e-Khidmat Markaz puts it plainly: cases are processed from the district where the case is registered.
4. Pay the fee and keep the receipt. In Islamabad the applicant has to hand in the documents in person.
5. Check the certificate before you leave. Compare every name, CNIC number and date against the cards and the nikah nama. A correction later is a separate application with its own fee.

Two other routes in Punjab

e-Khidmat Markaz issues the certificate for PKR 200 in 7 working days, but only where the nikah was registered in 2001 or later. For an older nikah, go to the Union Council. It asks for the application form, the registered nikah nama, the applicant’s CNIC and the bride’s and groom’s CNICs, with originals and photocopies attested by an officer of grade 17 or above. You get an applicant ID to track the case on its website.

Dastak, the Punjab government’s doorstep service, listed the marriage certificate among its first ten services when it launched in June 2024. You book through the Dastak app, its web portal or the 1202 helpline, a facilitator comes to you, and the certificate is delivered to your door, with a tracking ID for the application. Check the charges in the app before you book, because we have not verified them.

Applying through the Pak ID app

Since late 2025 NADRA’s Pak ID app has carried Union Council marriage registration, so you can apply from home instead of queueing at the office. It covers all of Punjab, announced by NADRA in December 2025 after a pilot in Jhelum, Chakwal and Nankana Sahib; every union council in Islamabad since June 2026; Peshawar since July 2026; and parts of Sindh, where the province also runs its own CRMS app. No authority publishes the in-app charges, so check the payment screen before you confirm. The same route covers births and deaths.

Can you check a marriage certificate online?

Not in the way most people searching for it hope. We looked for an official online check and found none:

• NADRA’s Verification Services page covers identity checks: biometric verification, Verisys, SMS, sign-in through PakID and batch checks. Nothing on it is for marriage certificates.
• NADRA publishes a list of its public web addresses. No CRMS address is on it, and the CRMS address that circulates online would not open for us from two different networks on 21 September 2026.
• None of the provincial pages above offers an online check either.

Some guides say the certificate carries a QR code you can scan. We could not find an official page describing that check, so we cannot tell you what a scan proves. If you do scan one, look at the address it opens. NADRA states that any website not operating under the nadra.gov.pk domain is not an official NADRA website, which also covers the sites with “nadra” in their name that charge for marriage checks.

What does work

The Union Council’s register. This is a legal right, not a favour. Section 5(6) of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance reads: “Any person may, on payment of the prescribed fee, if any, inspect at the office of the Union Council the record preserved under sub-section (5), or obtain a copy of any entry therein.” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sets the inspection fee at PKR 100. If you need to confirm that a marriage was registered, this is the check an official will accept.

Your own record at NADRA. To see whether NADRA shows you as married, and to whom, order a Family Registration Certificate of the marriage type, which NADRA’s fee schedule calls Beta. It lists your spouse and children, costs PKR 1,000, is issued in one day and, if you order it in the PakID app, arrives in the app’s ID Vault. Our guide to the FRC covers the types. If your spouse is missing from it, the marriage has not been recorded with NADRA yet.

Using it abroad: MOFA attestation

For a spouse visa or any other use outside Pakistan, the certificate usually has to be attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. MOFA’s checklist, revised on 11 June 2024, asks for more than the certificate:

• The usual case: the original nikah nama with the Nikah Registrar’s signature and stamp, the MRC, and the bride’s CNIC showing her husband’s name. In place of that CNIC, MOFA accepts a Family Registration Certificate, or a CRC where there are children from the marriage.
• A foreign spouse: add a copy of their passport, their Pakistani visa and their date of entry into Pakistan. MOFA says it will not attest without them.
• An “online” nikah: the same requirements, and the original nikah nama must be signed by the bride, the groom and the witnesses, with their thumb impressions.
• Azad Jammu and Kashmir: the nikah nama must be signed and stamped by the Tehsil Mufti, and is attested on the bride’s CNIC showing her husband’s name, or an FRC.
• A marriage abroad: the certificate must be attested by that country’s foreign office and countersigned by the Pakistani embassy or consulate there.

Our guide to CNIC for married women explains that choice. MOFA’s checklist also says attestation of documents of a permanent nature, a nikah nama included, remains valid, so there is no need to attest again later. MOFA handles apostille, for countries that accept one, by appointment only, and processes documents only on the booked date.

If you married abroad, or live abroad

Married abroad. For your NADRA record you do not need a Pakistani certificate at all. NADRA’s Registration Policy accepts a foreign marriage certificate for a change of marital status, as our guide to adding a spouse explains. If it later needs MOFA attestation, the rule for a marriage abroad in the list above applies.

Married in Pakistan, living abroad. The certificate still comes from the office where the nikah was registered. Islamabad requires the applicant to hand in the documents in person. Punjab’s e-Khidmat Markaz lists the applicant’s CNIC separately from the bride’s and groom’s, which suggests a relative can apply for you, but confirm with the centre before you send one. Our guide to NADRA services from abroad covers the rest.

If the nikah was never registered

You can still register it, and it is worth doing, because until you do there is no certificate and no change to your NADRA record. Take the nikah nama to the Union Council for the area where the nikah took place and ask what it needs for a late entry. Two points of law are worth knowing before you go, because guides tend to get both wrong:

• The penalty falls on whoever performed the nikah, not on the couple. Where the Nikah Registrar did not perform the nikah himself, Section 5 of the Ordinance requires whoever did to report it to him, and the punishment is for failing to report.
• Punjab’s penalty is far higher than the one usually quoted. The federal text allows up to three months’ simple imprisonment, a fine of up to PKR 1,000, or both. Punjab’s 2015 amendment made it up to three months and a fine of PKR 100,000. It also set up to a month and PKR 25,000 for a Nikah Registrar, or whoever performs the nikah, who does not fill in every column of the nikah nama accurately.

One more rule explains some refusals. Under Section 6, a second marriage contracted without the written permission of the Arbitration Council cannot be registered under the Ordinance, so a Union Council that turns one away is applying the law.

If the certificate is wrong

A misspelled name, a wrong date or a wrong CNIC number is corrected by the council that issued the certificate, not by NADRA. Do it in that order, because the certificate is what NADRA accepts as proof when it updates your marital status, so an error left on it travels into your NADRA record.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the one place that publishes the procedure in full. Rule 44 of its 2021 rules says you apply formally on Form-H with the supporting documents attached, and the council issues the corrected certificate within fifteen working days, or within a maximum of seven working days if you pay an extra fee for urgency. The schedule to those rules sets the correction fee at PKR 200, the same for a marriage certificate as for a birth or a death one, and it lists an urgent fee against births and deaths only, with a dash against marriage. The council secretary records every amended certificate in a register.

Two limits get quoted at people, and both are worth checking against the text. The three-year deadline, after which an attested copy of a court order is required, sits in rule 30, and rule 30 is written for birth and death registration entries; the general correction rule that covers a marriage certificate sets no equivalent deadline. The two-year limit is real but belongs to cancelling a certificate rather than correcting one: that application goes to the Chairman on Form-V, who may hold an inquiry, and past two years from issuance it needs an attested copy of a court order. A refusal has to be in writing with reasons, and the appeal lies to the Director.

Everywhere else the fee is published and the procedure is not. Punjab’s local government compendium carries a 2012 circular fixing the union council fees and warning officials against charging illegal dues, but it sets out no correction procedure, and we found none published for Sindh, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan or Islamabad. NADRA’s own published question set does not answer it either. Ask the council that registered the nikah what it needs, and expect an application, the nikah nama, both CNICs and documentary evidence of whatever is being corrected. One thing not to reach for: the Correction Form on NADRA’s Downloads page carries a previous tracking ID and corrects the particulars on a NADRA identity document application, so it does nothing for a union council record.

Common mistakes

• Taking the nikah nama to NADRA. NADRA needs the certificate from the Union Council, Cantonment Board or CDA.
• Assuming the nikah was registered. Confirm it at the Union Council well before you need the certificate.
• Applying where you live now. Apply where the nikah was registered.
• Leaving without checking the spellings. A correction is a second application and a second fee.
• Taking a CNIC with the father’s name to MOFA. Bring the Family Registration Certificate instead.
• Paying a lookalike site for an online marriage check. NADRA’s official websites all sit under nadra.gov.pk.

Once you have the certificate, the usual next step is updating your marital status with NADRA. It matters for children too: NADRA will not register a child until the parents’ marriage is on its record, as our guide to registering a newborn explains.

NADRA’s description of CRMS is from its Registration Ecosystem page, the marital status answer from the FAQ on its CNIC page, and the online checks from its Verification Services page and Domain Authenticity Policy, all read on 21 September 2026 (site version V3.1.3). Fees, times and documents are from Punjab Local Government and Community Development, e-Khidmat Markaz, ICT Administration and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorce Rules, 2021, whose rules 30, 44 and 46 and fee schedule give the correction and cancellation procedure above and were read again on 8 October 2026. The Punjab union council fee circular of 8 June 2012 is from the Punjab local government compendium, and the Correction Form from NADRA’s Downloads page, both read on 8 October 2026. Sections 5 and 6 are quoted from the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961 on Pakistan Code, and the Punjab penalties from the Punjab Code text as amended in 2015. Attestation rules are from MOFA’s attestation checklist, and the Dastak service list from the Associated Press of Pakistan, 4 June 2024. The Pak ID rollout is from NADRA’s announcement for Punjab, the Associated Press of Pakistan for Punjab and Sindh, ProPakistani for Islamabad, The Nation for the Sindh extension and the Pak Identity release notes for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, all read on 28 September 2026. The Islamabad, Sindh and Balochistan details are from NADRA’s public guides for Islamabad (13 June 2026), Sindh and Balochistan (11 June 2026), read on 2 October 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

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