State creating database of arms licence holders: IGP

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 29

Punjab has the highest number of arms licence holders in the country. Moreover, it is a border state and has faced black days of terrorism. For these particular reasons checking of legitimate and illegal firearms within Punjab becomes a priority for the state government to ensure peace, harmony, besides maintaining law and order for its citizens at large.

Meanwhile, state database of arms licences is being created. This was stated by Inspector General of Police (IGP), Crime, Shashi Prabha, during a technical workshop held at Police Academy in Phillaur today.

She said the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had notified in Rule 11 of the Arms Rules, 2016, for generation of unique identification number (UIN) for every arms licencee in National Database of Arms License – Arms License Issuance (NDAL-ALIS) system, developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), with the objective to check proliferation and misuse of arms and ammunition.

She said, “Such proliferation is a serious challenge to the internal security of the country.” “Providing the proposed UIN will create/update a dynamic central database of arms licences issued across the country,” she added.

While keeping in view all these objectives, the DGP, Punjab, has desired to conduct state-level technical workshops of the licencing authorities and the district police chiefs to apprise them of technical aspects of provisions of the Arms Act, 1959, and the Arms Rules, 2016.

The last state-level technical workshop in this connection was conducted at Punjab Police Academy, Phillaur, today. The workshop was attended by senior police and civil officials, including CPSs, DCs, DIGs, SSPs of Ludhiana and Jalandhar ranges.