Court seeks action taken report against arms license holders

Allahabad High Court has sought action taken report from Uttar Pradesh government against the arm license holders booked in criminal cases.
The Lucknow bench comprising Justices Sudhir Kumar Saxena and Rakesh Srivastava gave the order on a writ petition in the matter of celebratory firing, treating it as a petition.
The UP government had told the court that there are 5,730 arm licence holders against whom criminal trial was pending and FIR was registered against 1,061 licence holders.
Following the submission, the court sought to know what action has been taken against them.
The court directed the state government to inform it if the licenses in excess of permitted limit of three were cancelled and their arms got deposited or not.

Taking note of its earlier order, restraining the license holders from indulging in any sort of celebratory firing and restricting fresh issuance of licences on October 7, 2013, the court sought details from the state government, of licences issued by the District Magistrates after that date and reasons for it.

The court also gave "last opportunity" to the Centre to clear its stand on celebratory firing and the ratio in which the arms licences were granted to citizens in all the states and UT vis-a-vis held by the police force and what should be the ideal situation.
On the behalf of the state government, advocate Rishad Murtaza appeared and ADG (Rules) Chandra Prakash filed affidavit detailing the steps taken by the state government.

The court directed to list this matter for further orders on December 17, 2014.