311 licence holders fail to deposit weapons in Jhajjar

Ravinder Saini

Jhajjar, October 29

As many as 311 licence holders have failed to deposit their weapons despite repeated appeals by the district authorities in view of the panchayat elections scheduled to be held in the district under the first phase on October 30 and November 2. Taking a strong view of the non-compliance of the orders, Superintendent of Police (SP) Waseem Akram has now made a recommendation for the cancellation of all such licences.

“As many as 112 of these licences belong to the Badli police station, 70 to the Jhajjar city police station, 33 to Bahadurgarh linepar, 32 to Bahadurgarh city, 20 to Bahadurgarh Sadar police station, 17 with Aasoda, 16 to Dujana, nine to Beri and two to the Machhrauli police station,” said a source.

Interestingly, a majority of the licence holders are presently not residing at the addresses mentioned in their arms licence. They have shifted to other places. It came to the fore when officials of police stations concerned reached their houses to serve them notice for depositing the weapons.

“Such licence holders are, as per rules, bound to inform the authorities about their new address but they did not do so. A sufficient time was given to them for depositing their weapons. Even the deadline was extended by two days but they did not pay any heed, forcing the authorities to initiate the process of cancellation of their licences,” said a spokesman for the district police.

Notably, a total of 296 polling stations in the district have been declared sensitive and hypersensitive.

“As many as 45 polling stations have been declared as hypersensitive in Matanhail block followed by Bahadurgarh with 25 and Salhawas with 19. The count is 16 in Badli, 15 in Jhajjar, seven in Beri and five in Machhrauli blocks. Similarly, 79 polling stations have been identified as sensitive in Bahadurgarh, 25 in Matanhail, 22 in Machhrauli, 17 in Jhajjar, 11 in Badli, six in Beri and four in Salhavaas block,” said the source.

SP Waseem Akram said the district had a total of 5,974 arms licence holders and 5,663 among them had deposited the weapons. The process to get licences cancelled had been initiated by writing to the DC, he said.