Easy availability of arms worries Home Minister

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil on Saturday expressed concern over the easy availability of small arms and explosives and said, “Nations have to ensure that small arms and explosives are not sold to other countries in large numbers.” He was speaking at an interactive session after delivering a lecture organised at the Foreign Service Officers Institute under the Ministry of External Affairs here.

On Naxal violence, he admitted to “difficulties”, saying that law and order was a state subject. There was a suggestion that the Centre should be empowered in this regard and the Centre was “neither very enthusiastic nor unwilling. But state Governments were opposed to the Constitutional amendment needed for it”.