Missed
deadlines and weakened provisions: Road Safety at Risk
NGOs
request PM Modi to take action
Marking the first death
anniversary of Shri GopinathMunde, the Union Cabinet Minister who was killed in
a road accident last year, road safety NGOs and affected families from across
India have come together to demand strengthening of the road safety bill
drafted by the Government. The group of NGOs has launched an online
campaign, www.roadsafetyatrisk.in, to gather public
support for strengthening the Bill. The website allows users to send a letter
to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi requesting his intervention in the matter.
“We urge the Honourable Prime Minister to ensure that there is no compromise in the Bill. Enough lives have been lost and the safety of road users must be kept paramount. This is the only way to honour the deaths of Shri GopinathMunde and lakhs of common people who have lost their lives to this preventable epidemic”, says PiyushTewari, who founded the SaveLIFE Foundation after the death of a young family member in a road accident in 2008.
Shri Gopinath Munde was killed on the morning of June 3rd, 2014 when his car crashed with another on the intersection of Aurobindo Marg and Lodhi Road in New Delhi. His death sparked a major national debate on road safety in India, prompting the Union Transport Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari to announce on June 5th, 2014 that a new stringent road safety law will be brought to replace the Motor Vehicles Act “within one month”. The move was welcomed by road safety activists and NGOs as the proposal to upgrade the Motor Vehicles Act is pending since 2001. According to the National Crime Records Bureau figures, more than 15 lakh people have been killed in road accidents in India since the proposal was first mooted in 2001.
The first draft of the Road Transport and Safety Bill was
released for public comments on September 13th last year.
Since then, three more versions have been released by the Ministry. In the
latest version of the Bill available on the Ministry’s website, statutes to
hold road contractors, automobile manufactures, transporters and rash drivers
accountable have been watered-down. The independence of the proposed road
safety authority too has been curtailed. The Government has also changed its
position on the timing of the introduction of the Bill. In a statement made in
Parliament on February 26th, 2015, on the timing of the proposed Bill,
the Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, Shri P
Radhakrishnan, stated, “No definite timeframe can be given”.
Reiterating the group’s position, Mr.
PramodBhasin, Managing Trustee of the Muskaan Trust, a Jaipur-based NGO
stressed that,“There should be no
compromise in the Bill. All the road safety aspects must be retained”.
Other NGOs, which are part of the campaign are the Arundhati
Foundation from Bangalore, the Indian Head Injury Foundation from Delhi and V
Citizens Network from Mumbai.
For more
information, please contact:
Ms. Aditi Sachdeva, Associate Director, Policy &
Research | E: asachdeva@savelifefoundation.org | M: +91 987 387 4386
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