Haryana’s human rights panel seeks report on illegal vehicles, road openings

CHANDIGARH : Taking a suo motu cognisance of a report pertaining to over 5,000 deaths in road mishaps in Haryana last year, published in Hindustan Times on Wednesday, the Haryana Human Rights Commission (HHRC) has sought a report from the authorities concerned on the plying of illegal vehicles and unauthorised road openings which lead to fatal accidents.

The news item was based on the latest report of the research wing of the Union ministry of roads, transport and highways, which said 5,120 people lost their lives in road mishaps in the state in 2017.

The State Human Rights Commission took note of the details given in the report, according to which 1,990 people died in accidents on national highways in state and 1,369 on state highways.

The report said that 1,761 people were reported to have died in accidents on roads other than national or state highways.

While 1,962 people lost their lives because of over-speeding, as many as 86 people got killed in accidents caused by drunken driving.

Around 432 accidents were caused due to driving on the wrong side and 147 on account of jumping red traffic light, the report said.

The human rights body observed that if proper steps would have been taken by the police and the state government as well as national highway authorities, the number of accidents could have been reduced and valuable lives saved.

The panel further observed that it was noticed that unauthorised vehicles were being allowed to ply on the state and national highways which sometimes resulted into road accidents.

It was also noticed that at some points there were not sufficient signages and at some points, there were illegal openings on the state or national highways leading to road accidents and untimely deaths of people, the human rights body observed.

The panel sought report from additional inspector general of police (traffic), Haryana, safety officers of the national high way authority and the public works department (PWD) engineer-in-chief to submit their respective reports within six weeks on the facts of the news and particularly with regard to the steps being taken by them to prevent or minimise road accidents in future.

THE HARYANA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION TAKES SUO MOTU NOTICE OF HT REPORT ON DEATHS IN ROAD MISHAPS ON NATIONAL, STATE HIGHWAYS