Award from the Union Ministry to the traffic police of Bhopal has amazed one and all as traffic jams in almost all parts of the city and mismanagement in the traffic system are a common sight in Bhopal.
As many as 2453 road accidents have been reported in the city and in them 158 people have died from January to September 2015. In the same duration, 1936 people were injured, while 153 people were seriously injured.
Notably, Bhopal Traffic Police along with Gurgaon police were jointly awarded with Urban Mobility India Award of the Ministry of Urban Development's in the year 2015 for ‘Best Initiative for Improved Road Safety’. Bhopal Traffic Police bagged the award for its ‘Behtar Traffic-Behtar Bhopal’.
DSP Traffic Mahendra Jain and IG Yogesh Choudhary received the award in a function in New Delhi on Saturday.
On the one hand the police officials claim that they have done so much work that has attracted authorities at Central government, while on the other, the police officials here claim that the Traffic police in Bhopal is simply a monitoring agency.
While talking to ‘The Pioneer’ DSP Traffic Mahendra Jain claimed that a lot of works have been done in Bhopal towards improvement of traffic, however, he declined to give specific details of the works done in the recent past that has brought laurels to the cops.
DSP (Traffic) Basant Kaul said that the maintenance of the systems meant to manage the traffic and infrastructure. The rotaries, traffic signals, pavements, road dividers and cranes are provided by Bhopal Municipal Corporation and other agencies which make the system dependent on these agencies for their support and maintenance.
Traffic police could not be blamed as the lone agency for the increasing number of accidents as it is monitoring agency and systems and infrastructure are provided by other agencies.
Blame could not be put on traffic police for the increasing number of accidents in the city which do not owns the means to manage the traffic system, he added.
It has been observed that the traffic signals stop functioning in the city are not repaired as the earliest but the underneath problem is the lack of timely renewal of the company awarded with the maintenance by the departments and after these agencies are urged by the police officials action is taken to restore the system, Kaul said.