Its director Ruslin Jusoh said the report was made at 11am at the Putrajaya district police headquarters to enable the police to conduct an investigation into a claim by account holder “Tengku Raja Alam Shah” titled “200,000 new recipients of citizenship vow to repay the government”.

Ruslin said the number of people stated in the report was false and unreasonable as the process of obtaining citizenship was complicated and involved a tight procedure.

“We also want to find out if the accounts are false or not. If they are legitimate, we ask that the account holder come to JPN and present the evidence,” he said.

He said the home ministry had also issued a statement yesterday denying the claim.

“JPN views the allegation seriously as we have never issued 200,000 new citizenship certificates,” he said.

The claim, which went viral on social media, said the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government had given out citizenship to 200,000 people.

The ministry said this was not true since citizenship had been awarded to only about 4,000 eligible applicants since the change of government in May last year.

For the period from May 2018 to Sept 15 this year, the department received 19,788 applications for citizenship and approved 4,422, the ministry said.

Ruslin said JPN would also lodge a report with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) tomorrow to enable it to conduct an investigation.