Diggy complains to PM over Arms Act
It seems all is still not well between home minister P. Chidambaram and senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, as the latter on Wednesday knocked the door of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to complain about the home ministry’s bid to amend the Arms Act alleging the move undermines the citizen’s right to keep legal weapons.
Mr Singh, who led a delegation of MPs belonging to the Congress, BJP and SP, to the PM, had recently stirred the hornet’s nest in the political circle when he criticised Mr Chidambaram for his way of handling Naxal problem. As the patron-in-chief of the National Association for Gun Rights India, Mr Singh led the delegation, which included Jaswant Singh, S.S. Ahluwalia and Shahnawaz Hussain (BJP), Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh (SP), Naveen Jindal, Anil Lad, Sanjay Singh, Fransisco Sardinhia, Manish Tewari and Rakesh Singh (all Congress) and opposed the amendments proposed by the home ministry.
The delegation in a memorandum to the Prime Minister alleged that in the guise of moving a minor amendment to the Arms Act, ostensibly to make police verification mandatory and creating a database, the home ministry has quietly moved to change other important aspects of the law with the “goal of undermining” every citizen’s legal right to keep and bear arms.
“The ministry through its new policy has in effect changed the law and how it is implemented, without seeking parliamentary approval or following proper procedures,” the memorandum said. It claimed the new policy is based on the flawed assumption that “the proliferation of arms, whether licensed or illegal, vitiates the law and order situation” and added that it was not clear how the ministry arrived at such conclusion. “The ministry has admitted in Parliament that it has conducted no study/assessment linking firearms to rise in crime rate. Such statements are also a direct insult to lakhs of honest law-abiding citizens who keep and bear arms responsibly, by equating them to common criminals,” it said.
the memorandum added.
Criticising other changes brought in the law, the delegation said the new arms policy requires a citizen to prove grave and imminent threat to life prior to the grant of arms licence.
The memorandum was also critical of the changes for issuing all India validity arms licence. Earlier it was the respective state government who was the license issuing authority and now the ministry of home affairs will issue licences in all (non-VIP) cases.
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