District administration claim that the excess number of arms licenses issued from outside district (OD) is a cause of concern as most of them were found fake. In a bid to ensure that the fire-arms do not get misused during the upcoming four phase Panchayat Elections in the state, a thorough verification process is being conducted throughout the state so that illegal arms licenses could be seized ahead of the elections.
“Our motive is to ensure that the arm must remain with the person in whose name the license has been issued,” said Ranchi DC Manoj Kumar.
“The major cause of concern during the verification process was that most of the licenses were issued from other districts (OD) as well as other states like Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir while the communication received in connection with the licenses from those states were done in Hindi,” said Ranchi DC.
Kumar further said that after verification of OD licenses, more than 25 such licenses have been cancelled so far while the reports related to several others are still awaited. FIR’s have also been lodged against all of them, he said.
“Strangely, most of the licenses possessed by the people here were found to be issued from outside Ranchi, raising a natural doubt over them,” added Kumar.
Basically verification of arms licenses are presently being done in the rural areas but it has also been extended to some of the cities like Ranchi also, he said.
According to the directive issued by State Election Commission, verification of arms licenses was to be done various districts of Jharkhand. In Ranchi it was conducted on October 17 and 19.
Sources however, revealed that over 2000 arms licenses across the state have already been conducted ahead of the Panchayat Polls which are to take place in four phases in all the 263 blocks of 24 districts in Jharkhand.
Meanwhile, the process of allotting Unique Identification Numbers (UIN) is also in progress. As per the directive issues by MHA, details of those arms, not appearing on the official portal of Government of India from October 1 was to be declared illegal. Deadline for adding license details to the database was fixed for September 30.
Sources, however, confirmed that out of a total count of around five to six thousand arms license holders, only 1100 people submitted their license details till
April 28, 2015, which are being added to database. Only 15 to 20 filled up forms are reaching to the Arms Magistrate office per day, added a staff.
Although, notices related to the directive of the MHA are being published in different newspapers regularly, lack of awareness were found among the people, resulting to slow progress in this regard, said an official.
According to the directive of the MHA, details of every license holder in the country will have to be added in the centralized database on the basis of which they will be issued UIN to each of them.