2.5m arms licences yet to be renewed

Lahore: Punjab Home Department will stop the process of renewal of arms licences after the deadline of December 31, The News has learnt.

Additional Chief Secretary Home Department Punjab Fazeel Asghar said the deadline would not be extended. According to the ACS Home, the liscensees had been given awareness and time to get their arms licences renewed. Around 2.5 million licences of manual arms have not been renewed so far and the licences which could not revalidated till the deadline will be cancelled and declared bogus. On January 1, 2019, the police would start confiscating the arms of which licences were not renewed while such licensees would be arrested for having illegal weapons, said Kamran Arshad, an official of Punjab Home Department Arms Licences Branch. According to him, letters would be issued to the DCs and DPOs of the districts concerned regarding confiscation of the arms. Distress could be observed among the licensees who had manual arm licences but could not get computerised registration for the purpose due to multiple reasons. The News talked to some persons who were facing the distress. A man, Safar Deen, said his father died in 2016. His father had manual licence of a gun. Arms licence could be transfer in his name without getting succession certificate, he argued. After a long battle, he got succeeded in getting succession certificate. After that he moved to DCO office where he applied for transfer of arms license from father to his name. Six months were wasted in getting reports from Special Branch. He knocked the doors of Special Branch and DCO office many times. After getting clearance from Special Branch, the letter was sent o Home Department where he had no acquaintance there. He has been waiting for the response from Home Department. According to him, his file has gone under the pile of other files at Home Department. However, Kamran denied the allegation of Safar Deen and said every file was processed within no time. There was no pile of files at Home Department, he said. According to ACS Home, the officials of NADRA have been issued instructions to facilitate the people on a priority basis to get their arms licences revalidated across Punjab. The affectees demanded the govt revalidate licenses automatically.