As more than one lakh people lost their lives every year in road accidents in India, Union Minister for Road, Transport & Highways Shipping, Nitin Gadkari has blamed engineering defects in road projects and negligence in the process of issuing driving licences in the country.
Acknowledging an escalation of more than four percent in road accidents under NDA regime, Nitin Gadkari termed it as his government’s failure to bring down the number of road accidents and loss of precious human lives on roads in the country.
According to the government’s data, 1,46,133 people were killed in road accidents in India in 2015, a 4.6 percent rise over 2014 when 1,39,671 people were killed. While more than five lakh accidents occurred, over 400 people were killed in road accidents every day in 2015.
Stating that road accidents account for a large number of deaths and injuries every year than to enemy fire, Maoist attacks in the country, Gadkari while addressing regional editors’ conference here said that more than 30 percent driving licences in the country are fake.
“From Ministers to common man… they get their licences while sitting at home. Also, engineering defects is leading to maximum number of road accidents. The Government is now trying to deal with these problems. Apart from this, a series of initiatives for road safety are being implemented including safety audits, identification of 723 accidents prone spots to rectify it, installation of CCTVs, automated camera based driving test system among others,” Gadkari said.
Amid the protests from transporters against the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016, he said that the bill is likely to come in the upcoming winter session of Parliament and talks have been held with the transporters on various issues and they have assured their support now.
Giving an overview of his Ministry’s ongoing and upcoming projects, the Union Minister said that a vehicle scrapping policy has been drafted by the Ministry which would offer a combined benefit of Rs 14,000 crore to the Centre and states and will also drive the auto industry growth by 22 per cent.
As a part of this policy, it is proposed to recycle various parts of the scrapped heavy vehicle or trucks and also provide concession to mitigate the loss to owners, said Gadkari.
The Union Minister also talked about new initiative of Setu Bharatam, aimed at making road travel safe by constructing ROBs or under passes at all 208 level crossings, and project Bharatmala, which aims to build national highways to connect coastal/border areas including small ports, backward areas, religious places, improve connectivity to char-dham and connect all district headquarters to national highways.
Regarding national waterways projects, Gadkari said that at present, there are only 5 inland waterways and government has identified 106 more.
When asked about his four months old announcement to solve the problem of traffic congestion at Tribune Chowk in Chandigarh, Gadkari said that a detailed project report would be made in this regard.
Notably, Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher had written to Nitin Gadkari seeking solution to the problem of traffic congestion at Tribune Chowk. The Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) in its report had stated that Tribune Chowk exhibits high traffic volumes (more than 1,00,000 passenger car units). Since then, the Chandigarh Administration has been looking into the feasibility of proposals including underpasses, BRT (Bus Rapid Transport) corridor, new links and bypasses among others on the long stretch.