New Delhi, Feb 13.
The Indian Constitution doesn’t confer any fundamental right on a citizen to carry arms unlike the US Constitution which permits every citizen to carry arms in self-defence, the Supreme Court said on Monday, expressing concern over the proliferation of unlicensed arms in the country.
To check the possession and use of such illegal firearms, the top court instituted a suo motu case to get the authorities in Uttar Pradesh to arrest what it dubbed as a “disturbing trend”.
“Unlike the US Constitution where the right to bear arms is a fundamental right, under the wisdom of our founding fathers, no such right has been conferred on anybody under the Constitution of India,” a two-judge bench, led by Justice K.M. Joseph, observed.
In the US, this right has led to a huge spurt in violence, with many calling for a rollback of this right. Similarly, in India, even though arms and ammunition can only be possessed by a citizen under a license sanctioned by the state illegal arms proliferate.
This has been a major concern for the Indian authorities and the judiciary earlier. Today, the bench asked the Uttar Pradesh government to file an affidavit indicating if it had filed any cases regarding possession or use of illegal arms in the state under the Arms Act or any other penal law.
This has to be done in four weeks, the top court said. The state was also asked to submit steps it proposed to take in the coming days to come to root out the “evil of unlicensed arms”. The court was dealing with a case of killing by use of such unlicensed weapons today.
The bench, which also comprised Justice B.V. Nagarathna, expressed surprise over the occurrence of incidents involving such illegal firearms in the state.
Justice Joseph said that such incidents were unheard of in his home state, Kerala. “This is unheard of there. Very few cases.” Justice Nagarathna attributed the frequency with which such incidents are reported from Uttar Pradesh to a “feudal mindset”.
Though demands were made in the Constituent Assembly to grant such a right to all citizens to protect themselves, it fell through. The courts have also consistently ruled against granting citizens any such right with the rare exception of a High Court single judge ruling to the contrary.
The court has in the Ponty Chadha case earlier expressed concern over proliferation of illegal arms. Chadha was killed in a shootout between his security guards and others.
The court had then lodged a suo motu case and asked the centre to explain the norms for issuing gun licences to private security persons and if they were being regulated at all. Indians are sitting on a stockpile of 71,101,000 arms, a majority of them unlicensed, as gunpolicy.org figures of 2017.
