Uttar Pradesh tops the chart of most fatalities in road accidents in the country with over 83,000 lives lost between 2009 and 2013 at an average of about 16,000 deaths every year.
The figures compiled by the Supreme Court-appointed Commission on Road Safety list out the top 13 States in the country having a high incidence of road accident deaths. Besides UP (83,949), the other States notorious for most fatal accidents include Tamil Nadu (76,315), Andhra Pradesh (74,754), Maharashtra (63,162), and Karnataka (46,769). The last recorded data in 2013 too records these States to have the highest number of deaths on roads.
But the task of the Commission headed by retired Supreme Court judge KS Radhakrishnan to enforce road safety laws has become a tedious exercise after it surfaced that statistics provided by States was at variance with those available with the National Crime Records Bureau.
For instance, UP records the number of fatalities between 2009 and 2013 to be 83,949 while NCRB figures suggest 83,478. Although here the difference is marginal, the difference is baffling in the States of Jharkhand, Punjab, Karnataka and West Bengal. One look at Jharkhand’s figures explain that there is severe under-reporting of fatalities by the State to the Centre. Between Central data (12,806) and State data (6,183) there is a gap of 6,623 deaths unreported. Similar is the case with Punjab, where Centre is suggesting that 21,549 people died in four years (2009-13) while the State maintains only 17,471 died.
Who is lying is the obvious question that the Commission asked when it met the representatives of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) and the concerned Transport officials of the States.
Speaking to The Pioneer, Justice Radhakrishnan explained, “The MoRTH collects data on a 19-point format which is sent to all States. At the meeting many States informed us that they were yet to come across such a format. This was the reason that we sought figures under road accidents, fatalities and injuries caused from individual States and UTs and recorded the difference in the two sets of data.”
The difference chart compiled by the Commission throws up interesting case studies. One instance is of Karnataka where the MoRTH claimed 10,046 died in the year 2013. The State figure turned out to be as high as 16,405 for that same year. Similar is the story of Punjab and West Bengal in the same year where the respective States have claimed 3,716 and 5,941as against Central data of 4,588 and 5,504 respectively.
The Commission is even concerned about the lack of coordination between various departments such as Health, Police, and Transport, both in the States and at the Centre. “lack of coordination seriously hampers the implementation of laws and remedial steps such as road engineering and identification of black spots.” The Commission listed 13 States as critical realising that the fatalities recorded in these States are excessive. In this list of fatalities during 2009-13, Rajasthan comes at the closer sixth position after Karnataka, followed by Madhya Pradesh (40,082), Gujarat (37,927), West Bengal (27,105), Bihar (24,734), Haryana (23,047), Punjab (21,549) and Kerala (20,469).