JORHAT, June 10 - Over 90 per cent of arms licence holders in the district who failed to acquire a Unique Identification Number (UIN) by registering at the Deputy Commissioner�s office by March 31, 2018, have got their licences cancelled.
Jorhat Deputy Commissioner Narayan Konwar told The Assam Tribune that as per a MHA directive, all arms license holders were asked to register their arms license at the DC�s office by March 31, 2018, and get a UIN.
The DC said that as per the directive, the MHA was undertaking a plan to prepare a database under the name � National Database of Arms Licenses (NDAL) � of all arms license holders across the country by allotting a UIN to each license so that from anywhere across India necessary information about a particular license and the person possessing could be known by entering the UIN in the database.
Konwar said that initially the MHA had set October 1, 2015 as the deadline to get UIN by the arms license holders by registering at their respective DM�s offices. However, the deadline was extended several times and March 31 this year was the final date fixed for getting the UIN.
In view of failure to comply with the MHA directive despite several reminders to the arms license possessors by issuing public notices, he (Konwar) in the capacity of the District Magistrate by an order issued recently cancelled 3274 arms licenses out of a total of 3607 license holders in the district. Only 333 arms license holders had acquired UIN in Jorhat district, the DC said.
Konwar, in his order, has directed the holders of all those arms licenses that have got cancelled, to deposit their respective arms at the nearest police stations immediately and non-compliance of the same will be followed by legal action.
The order, however, has stated that if any person wanted to file objection in this regard than he could submit the same at the DC�s office within 15 days of issuing this order.
It may be mentioned here that during his tenure as the Deputy Commissioner of adjoining Sivasagar district earlier Konwar had cancelled a large number of arms licenses by not renewing them after finding the allotment of the same to be �undeserving�.
