Prayagraj:
The Allahabad High Court, while giving important orders in a case related to arms license, has said that it is necessary to dispose of the applications for arms license within the time limit. The court has said that the Chief Secretary should take action against the District Magistrate and other officials who do not dispose of applications within the time limit. The court has also asked all the District Magistrates of the state to regularly monitor the pending applications of the arms license and at the same time it has been instructed to develop the system of monitoring its monitoring.
It is worth noting that while hearing the petition of Shiv Om of Mainpuri, Justice Vikram D Chauhan had sought information from the state government on February 17, why the applications for arms license are not being disposed of within the time limit, while the time limit has been fixed for the disposal of the application in the Arms Act. In response to this order on Tuesday, Chief Standing Council Kunal Ravi Singh informed the court that on 10 March 2025, the state government has issued a mandate and all the District Magistrates have been directed that the arms applications should be disposed of within every situation within the time limit fixed in the Arms Act.
On this, the High Court said that now we are not passing any opposite order in this matter, but if the District Magistrate does not follow the mandate, then the Chief Secretary should take action and if an officer is not giving a report to the district officer in time, then the district officer should take action against him.
The High Court has directed the officers of all departments including the police to follow the instructions of the District Magistrate in the case of arms license. The court has directed all the District Magistrates to collect details of the pending applications of arms license in their district and send it to the Chief Secretary within 45 days. If any application is pending for more than the deadline, then it should be disposed of immediately.
The court clarified that citizens cannot be forced to come to this court only to get this instruction that the special officer can use his power. It is the duty of the officer to use the statutory instructions given to the said officer. The court said in its order that as far as the current case is concerned, the Chief Permanent Advocate of the state government has submitted that the petitioner’s arms license application has been rejected by the order of 7 March 2025 and a copy of it has been provided to the petitioner’s counsel.
At this stage, the petitioner’s counsel has presented that he can be allowed to challenge it according to the law. The court said that the petition is settled with the freedom to challenge it as per the law to the petitioner.
