Ministry requested for a renewed policy to counter terrorism in February. PHOTO: EXPRESS/FILE
KARACHI: The federal interior ministry will be able to issue plastic arms licences after the Sindh High Court (SHC) gave it permission to do so on Friday.
The government had been receiving numerous demands for arms licences from the law enforcement agencies and ordinary citizens who wanted to carry weapons in the aftermath of the deadly attack on Army Public School, Peshawar, in December last year. To accommodate these requests, the interior ministry had requested the court in February to revise its earlier ruling against plastic arms licences.
In 2012, a division bench of the SHC had declared the federal government's policy of replacing the old booklet arms licences with the new machine-readable plastic cards as illegal. The court had also ordered the government to issue old booklet licences. Last month, the interior ministry approached the high court for permission to continue issuing the new arms licences.
In the application filed through the additional attorney-general, the interior secretary said the ministry is receiving a large number of requests from the armed forces, the other law enforcement agencies and the citizens to issue them licences for the weapons of prohibited and non-prohibited bores.
He argued that the ministry is unable to cater to the requests because of the stay granted by the court.
On Friday, a division bench comprising SHC chief justice Faisal Arab and Justice Zafar Ahmed Rajput gave them permission. The judges remarked that the court could not intervene in the matters of the government. They allowed, therefore, the government to issue the plastic card arm licences.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 28th, 2015.
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