‘Issue fresh licenses to renowned shooters with All India validity’

New Delhi: Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has directed the Delhi Police to issue fresh licenses to renowned shooters with “All India” validity instead of validity within Delhi only, the Raj Niwas officials said on Sunday. This has been done keeping in mind the fact that they frequently need to travel across the country for various sporting events, they added.

The officials said that their cartridge quota has also been increased significantly from 20 to 10,000 annually with the one-time cartridge procurement increased from 10 at present to 1,000.

“Following a decisive push by the L-G to rationalise and ease the licensing processes, the Delhi Police has initiated a major reform in the grant of arms licenses, till now marred by complaints of favouritism, corruption and arbitrariness. The move apart from helping applicants at large will specifically benefit the country’s shooting sportspersons,” an official said. Apart from speedy disposal of pending applications, it will also be ensured that fresh applications are disposed in a time-bound manner through an online portal, which will be modified specifically for this purpose, he added.

The official said that the L-G has also directed for rationalising the renewal of arms licenses.

In a departure from the present system where the online portal does not prescribe any timeline for the arms licensing procedures, Saxena has asked the Delhi Police to make all services — fresh licenses, renewal, area validity, registration, sale of arms etc. time bound, he added.

The official said that Saxena has asked the police to expedite the disposal of all nearly 6,000 pending applications by the end of this year.

Similarly, all redundant documents required for fresh licenses as well as renewal are being reviewed and those found unnecessary will be removed subsequently, he added.

Saxena has directed for making the modified arms licensing portal operational by March-end. The modified portal will provide the applicants the liberty to schedule the date and time of their interview online as per their convenience and preferably via video conference or video call.

This is aimed at cutting possibilities of human interface that often lead to harassment and corruption, the official said.

On the L-G’s directions, starting January 15, the Delhi Police has already started granting provisional renewal during the pendency of Local Police Report (LPR) after verifying the applicants’ criminal record (if any) from Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) and State Crime Record Bureau (SCRB), the official said.