Beyond deadline: Pir Pagara verifies 20 arms licences

KARACHI:

After the Sindh government announced that it cancelled around 600,000 unverified arms licences, the spiritual leader of Hur Jamaat and chief of Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) Pir Pagaro reached the home department on Thursday and had 20 licences verified, even though the verification deadline expires on May 19.

Officials of the home department said that Pagaro had already applied for the verification and his case was pending before the home department.

The verification process of arms licences was initiated in 2013 on the directives of the Supreme Court. The government verified around 56,891 licences out of a total 1.05 million in the province. The home department will inform arms dealers of the licences that have been cancelled.

During the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah announced that no further chances will be given to licence holders and ordered the relevant officials to consider unverified licences as invalid.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2015.