GMDA earmarks black spots in Gurugram to curb road mishaps
GURUGRAM: Taking cognisance of the increased cases of road accidents and traffic jams in the city, the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) has earmarked major spots in the city that are proving to be black spots. The government body's engineering team is now planning to change the designing of these roads for which it will send a proposal to the state government.
Some of the prominent areas that have been seen as black spots are HUDA City Centre, Mahavir Chowk, Kherki Dhaula, Hero chowk, Atul Kataria Chowk, etc.
Under this programme, there are already plans to develop an underpass at Atul Kataria Chowk. On an average, there are nine accidents that occur daily in Millennium City. In 2014, there were 1180 cases of accidents leading to 430 deaths. In 2015, the cases slightly reduced to 1140 but the death toll was higher at 435 while in 2016 there were 1201 incidents of accidents leading to 420 deaths. In 2017, there were 481 people who had lost their lives on the roads of Gurugram.
The city that has just come up recently and is now progressing towards being a Smart city, lacks comprehensive planning in road safety, inviting criticism for its planners and administration.
The staggering data only goes on to prove this claim. According to the government figures, in every four minutes one person dies in road accident. Seventeen people lose their lives in an hour due to mishaps on the road. In over a decade, there have been over 10 lakh people who have died due to road mishaps. Forty percent of the victims include pedestrians and two wheeler drivers.
Besides increase in number of accidents, the Millennium city is also grappling with the challenge of congestion and traffic jams that are seen to be the major cause of air pollution. It is important to note that there are over 13 underpasses that have been built in Gurugram. However most of them are at NH-8. GURUGRAM: Even as Haryana has a stringent law on snatching, a large number of cases are reported on daily basis in the richest city of the state Gurugram. In one of the cases that can to be major deterrent for the snatchers, the Gurugram district court has given a five-year jail term to person who had stolen a smartphone from the software engineer last year in 2017. Like in many cases they too would have gone scot free, however, the need to click pictures from the phones proved to be their undoing.
The software engineer who had filed a case in the Sohna police station was able to track the location of the robbers and get them arrested. The case went on for 11 months and finally the court awarded Nand Kishore, one of the snatcher, a five-year jail term and Rs 5,000 fine. The other culprit was a juvenile.
There doesn't seem to be any fear of law among the snatchers in Gurugram. This is despite the fact that Haryana has a strong law against this crime to an extent of making it a non bailable offence. One of the biggest impediments is the lack of filing the FIR in most of the cases to pursue the case further.
There are also problems in identifying the victims who normally target their victims in groups. Recently, a person who was accused in stealing the phone from the woman was let-off by the court due to lack of evidence. What seems to be a worrying factor in these cases is that most of the criminals who start criminal activities like snatching are not deterred even when they are held by the police.