ISLAMABAD: A senior official of the ministry of interior shocked many senators with the information that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa issued nearly 80,000 arms licences having countrywide validity in the past one year.

Additional Secretary Ministry of Interior Mukhtar Ali Khan told the Senate Standing Committee on Interior on Thursday that the 18th Constitution Amendment granted the provinces the authority to issue arms licences, and they wanted to keep it.

The committee, which met with Senator Talha Mehmood in the chair, was informed that Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also legislated relevant laws of their own.

Interior ministry says the province issued 80,000 licences in one year

Mukhtar Ali Khan said the KP had issued 79,256 licences and Sindh 17,000 over the past one year.

Punjab issued 2,482 licences during the same period, including 133 for arms of prohibited bore for Nandipur power project, and Balochistan 1,132 arms licences.

The committee chairman, Talha Mehmood, accused the KP government of concealing facts and claimed that it had also issued licences for prohibited bore.

Even issuing 80,000 licences of non-prohibited bore in a year was alarming and warranted a thorough probe, he said, adding that a new arms policy prepared by the interior ministry had been sent to the law ministry for opinion.

The policy, however, has been sent to the prime minister and was likely to be discussed by the cabinet.

The Senate panel chairman said it had been proposed in the draft policy that no licence should be issued to a person of criminal background or a tax evader.

He said the provinces would have the powers to issue licences of non-prohibited bore under the proposed policy, while the prohibited bore licences would be issued after prime minister’s approval.

The meeting was informed that over 1,100 no objection certificates (NOCs) for bulletproof vehicles had been issued during the PPP regime.

The present government has so far issued 138 NOCs, while a fake NOCs scam was also unearthed. As many as 49 fake NOCs were issued.

The panel was told that 80 per cent of the bulletproof vehicles were imported. Eight local companies were in the business of bulletproofing vehicles in Pakistan and they are required to obtain NOC from the interior ministry.

The members of the panel were, however, surprised to know that there was no proper law on bulletproofing of vehicles.

The committee was informed that there were 8,956 Chinese working in Pakistan and the number of security personnel guarding them was 12,596.

As many as 1,530 security personnel had recently been recruited to provide foolproof security to the Chinese working on Diamer Bhasha dam.

It was decided that the National Counterterrorism Authority (Nacta) will give an in-camera briefing to the committee on the security of Chinese residing in Pakistan.

Two members of the committee, Aijaz Ahmad Dhamra and Fateh Mohammad Hasni, took strong exception to the absence of Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan from the meeting.

They demanded the chair to ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take action against Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan for his undeclared boycott of the committee proceedings.

Talha Mehmood said a letter to this effect had already been written to the prime minister.

He said the ministry had informed the prime minister that the panel met six to seven times a month and thus it is not possible for the minister to attend its meetings.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2014