Bureau Report
PESHAWAR: Police on Sunday announced to cancel permits of arms licenses issued in Peshawar district, directing its holders to submit them at the concerned police station. Directives have also been issued to the cops on-road duties to seize permits and weapons during snap-checking as their legal standing has been annulled.
“No one could roam the streets along with weapons on the basis of the issued permits,” they said adding that anyone needing a weapon for safety purposes should get a proper license. The authorities further clarified that even the license holders could use arms as per the rules and regulations. “No one is allowed to carry arms,” they said.
It is pertinent to mention here that during a meeting in February 2019, Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Mahmood Khan directed to activate the computerized arms licensing system across the province. CM Mahmood Khan said that the government would provide funds and resources to computerize around 2.5 million arms licenses in the province.
He asked the concerned authorities to make the mechanism of issuing computerized arms license simple. The officials briefed the meeting that so far more than 200,000 computerized licenses had been issued. They said that the process generated revenue of Rs600 million rupees. The computerized arms license could be verified both online and offline through scanning the barcode, said the officials.
Earlier in February, the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) had cleared the air over reports regarding extension in date for registration of arms licenses for computerization process.
A spokesman for NADRA said that there was no truth in reports regarding the extension in date for registration of arms licenses for the computerization process.
“We have not received any notification in this regarding from Punjab home department,” he said while terming the reports as fake. “Manual licenses that were not submitted for the computerization process by December 2020 will be considered as cancelled,” the NADRA official said.
