Concerned over the low turnout of the arms licence holders with Unique Identification Number (UIN) forms, officials in Ranchi have started working on war footage to achieve the target fixed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). According to the directive issues by the MHA, details of those arms, not appearing on the official portal of Government of India from October 1, will be declared illegal. Deadline for adding license details to the database has been fixed for September 30.
“As I have put the matter on top of my priority list, I expect that the process will be completed in the next three months,” said District Arms Magistrate Vidya Bhushan Kumar. Attributing lack of awareness among the people for the low turnout, Kumar added that they have been working on war footing to meet the deadline of September 30 by MHA.
Sources, however, confirmed that out of a total count of around five to six thousand arms license holders, only 1100 people have so far submitted their license details 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, there is a lack of awareness 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.
Acting on the directive, district administration issued a notice requesting every arms license holder to submit filled up the prescribed format along with a self attested photo copy of their license to the office of Arms Magistrate, nearest arms dealer or to nearest Police Station, fixing the last date as April 30. Once the licensed arms holder’s name gets on the portal of MHA, UIN will be issued to them.