Chief secy assures SC panel of steps to check road mishap deaths
LUCKNOW: Chief secretary Anoop Chandra Pandey on Monday made a commitment to the Supreme Court committee on road safety that the state government will take all possible steps to put the brakes on the growing number of deaths due to road accidents in Uttar Pradesh.
Pandey led a team of over three dozen officials who appeared before the committee in New Delhi on Monday to explain the reasons for the increasing number of deaths due to road accidents and the measures taken by the departments concerned to deal with the situation. Principal secretary (home) Arvind Kumar and transport commissioner P Guruprasad were part of the team.
“The chief secretary, who led us, accepted at the meeting that the situation is serious despite all efforts and assured the committee of taking all possible measures to control the road accidents and the deaths due to them,” said those privy to the meeting.
The three-member committee appointed by the apex court in 2014 keeps on monitoring the status of road accidents in various states. It issues directions to the state from time to time with a view to curtailing the number of deaths by 50% by 2020 in the country in keeping with India’s commitment to the United Nations.
Uttar Pradesh leads the country every year when it comes to the number of deaths in road accidents.
Alarmed at the around 14% increase in the number of road accident deaths in UP between January and August 2018, the committee had fixed the meeting for October 29, insisting that the chief secretary attend the meeting personally.
Over 15,000 people died and another 20,000 were injured in over 28,000 cases of road accidents from January to August in UP this year. The deaths due to road mishaps were found to have registered an unprecedented rise of nearly 14% over the corresponding period of the previous year.
Supreme Court retired judge justice KS Radha Krishnan chaired the meeting at which top officials of departments like
UTTAR PRADESH LEADS THE COUNTRY EVERY YEAR WHEN IT COMES TO THE NUMBER OF DEATHS IN ROAD ACCIDENTS
home, traffic, transport, education, health, PWD, local bodies and Yamuna Expressway Authority enumerated the work being done by them to reduce the road accident-related deaths in the state.
“The committee, however, remarked that all these measures had no meaning if the result was zero,” those privy to the meeting said. The committee said it was a matter of serious concern that deaths in UP had grown alarmingly instead of coming down.
The committee, according to sources, asked the chief secretary, among other things,, to strengthen and activate the district road safety committees and provide and deploy adequate manpower at the state road safety cell.
The committee also made it clear that it wanted a result-oriented approach to the issue.
The chief secretary, who had been regularly holding meetings with the departments concerned prior to the committee’s meeting, is expected to issue a slew of directions to check road accidents and deaths in the state, sources said.