Punjab has highest number of arms license holders in country: IGP

LUDHIANA: Punjab has the highest number of arms license holders in the country which is the reason that checking of valid and illicit firearms within the state is a priority, Inspector General of Police, (Crime), Shashi Prabha said here today.

"Punjab has the highest number of arms license holders in the country. Being a border state and having faced black days of terrorism, checking licit and illicit firearms within the state of Punjab, becomes a priority area for the state government," the IPS officer said.

She was addressing a technical workshop at the Police Academy in Phillaur today.

She said that according to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs there should be a Unique Identification Number (UIN) for every arms licensee in the NDAL-ALIS (National Database of Arms License - Arms License Issuance) system developed by National Informatics Center (NIC) with an aim to check proliferation and misuse of arms and ammunition.

Such proliferation is a serious challenge to the internal security of the country and providing the proposed UIN would create a dynamic central database of the arms licenses issued across the country, she said.

Keeping in view these objectives, workshops of the licensing authorities and district police chiefs are being conducted to apprise them of the technical aspects of the provisions of the Arms Act, 1959 and the Arms Rules, 2016 to meet the objectives, an official statement released here said.