Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Aug 12: Despite concerns from several quarters, the issuance of arms licenses is rampant in Jammu and Kashmir with concerned authorities issuing over 27,000 such licenses during the past one year. Since the exercise is fraught with dangers given the sensitivity of the State, the Home Department has geared up exercise for having online arms license processing and monitoring system in order to ensure complete transparency in the whole exercise.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that 28680 application forms for issuance of arms licenses were received in the offices of District Magistrates across the State during the past one year out of which exercise on 844 applications was not initiated for varied reasons while as 143 applications were still pending with the District Magistrates. The remaining 27693 applications were cleared with the issuance of arms licenses.
Of 28690 applications, 12156 were received by the District Magistrate Jammu, 2535 by Udhampur DM, 800 applications were received in Kargil, 120 Anantnag, 23 Bandipora, 1306 Baramulla, 1463 Budgam, 18 Doda, 63 Ganderbal, 334 Kathua, 85 Kulgam, 259 Kupwara, 11 Leh, 169 Poonch, 147 Pulwama, 751 Rajouri, 1827 Ramban, 95 Reasi, 466 Samba, 355 Shopian and 1332 Srinagar. A total of 4365 licenses having validity all over the country have also been issued by the Home Department during this period.
About such applications received in Kishtwar district, sources said, “the figure in this district is disputed because of discrepancies and the same is under examination to ascertain the genuineness of licenses”.
“Though the Union Home Ministry had in April 2010 issued directions to all the States across the country for maintenance of comprehensive database of all the arms licenses issued yet initially no serious step was initiated in Jammu and Kashmir to lay thrust on the online arms licenses processing and monitoring system”, sources said.
After about two years (in 2012), the State Home Department issued circular to District Magistrates for streamlining the procedures and matter related to issuance of arms licenses in the State but slackness continued to prevail particularly with regard to online arms licenses processing and monitoring system despite the fact that the same was imperative, sources regretted.
This compelled the State Home Department to again issue circular in January this year reiterating guidelines and instructions for strict compliance by all the concerned, sources said while disclosing that till date information relating to a total of 5613 arms licenses has been processed as per the online processing and monitoring system.
Taking serious note of non compliance of repeated directions, the Principal Secretary, Home Department, Suresh Kumar has started laying required thrust on this aspect by holding frequent meetings and interactions through tele-conference with the District Magistrates and personally monitoring the progress being made in this regard.
As per the directions of the Principal Secretary, Home Department, the District Magistrates are required to implement the web based centralized system designed and developed by National Informatics Centre for issuance, renewal and recommendation of extending the jurisdiction to the Home Department within one month positively.
The District Magistrates are also required to upload the information relating to licenses issued earlier from their district in the software. Moreover, they have been directed to issue fresh licenses from the web-based application only. “The applications and the requests for extending the jurisdiction will be considered only when their licenses have been uploaded in the system and same are verifiable from the online database maintained by each district”, sources added.
In response to a question, sources said, “the issuance of arms licenses is required to be controlled in a most transparent manner so as to ensure that weapons don’t fall in the hands of anti-social and anti-national elements keeping in view the sensitivity of the State”.
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