Union Road Transport and Highways Minister says he will take steps to eradicate corruption in existing road transport system in the country. In particular, he might focus on RTOs in a way that they will no more find space for committing irregularities and get their palms greased. We have the Motor Vehicles Act in place and it has been made applicable to the entire country. But as vehicular traffic has increased manifold in the country, the existing Act is deficient in meeting new requirements. Foremost deficiency is its inadequacy of preventing road accidents in which thousands of innocent lives are lost. India is one of the countries in the world where the number of deaths owing to road accidents is the highest. We are not talking about the reasons of road accidents, although that is of vital importance, we are actually talking of dispensation of road accident cases in which justice is not done to the victims or unjust punishment is given to the defaulters.
There are also several short comings in the process of issuing driving licenses. Generally, after road accidents happen, and official inquiry is held, it is found that the person driving the vehicle had either no driving license or it was a fake one. We have seldom heard that in such cases the RTO concerned is held responsible for allowing fake driving licenses to be issued. Another shortcoming is that vehicles are not subjected to strict periodical checks for proper functioning of the machine. It has been found that old and dilapidated vehicles are dragged along the roads because the Traffic Police are bribed and they allow these obsolete vehicles to ply and thus create serious obstacles in smooth running of traffic.
It has to be noted that in western developed countries there are specifications for engines of vehicles which have to be adhered to. These specifications are set forth to ensure that there is not emission of smoke that causes pollution of air and is injurious to health. Only Euro II and Euro III provided vehicles can ply on roads. This is not strictly adhered to in our country.
It is good news that the Union Minister for Roads and Highways has decided to bring about in the next session of the Parliament an amendment to the Act. He has a plan of introducing international norms for vehicle design and pollution control on the basis of prevalent laws in six advanced nations – US, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Germany and UK. Driving license would be issued on line and violation of traffic rules would be accounted for on the basis of camera recording. Entire traffic system is proposed to be brought on e-governance.
This is all very encouraging and with it India will join the rank of six countries of the world in which road traffic system will run on most modern lines. But while it is so, there are some questions to be answered. Widening of roads and improving them so as to bring them of world class level is a huge task which will take a long time and enormous funds. The Minister has already found that 21 out of 51 road widening projects have fallen through. Projects worth 50,000 crore rupees have remained unexecuted for one or the other reason. Hurdles of land acquisition and green nods are main reasons for non-utilization of these funds. We hope the Union Ministry of Transport and Highways will devise mechanism to overcome the two main hurdles while it is proposing to move ahead with the amendment in the Act. Widening and improving the roads has to be undertaken on priority basis here and now keeping in mind that during the month of July not a single meter length of Highways was built. That is very discouraging and we hope that the target of 30 kilometers per day of Highways will be achieved uniformly.
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