Given the rising incidences of road accidents and consequent injury and death, road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari is keen that the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, which proposes stringent punishment for offenders, is passed in the next session of Parliament.

The minister, who has been able to impart momentum to highways construction, said that his highest priority would be on bringing down the number of road accident-related deaths in the country and reduce it by at least 50% by 2019.

With 1.4 lakh deaths on roads in 2015, India accounts for 11% of all road traffic fatalities in the world. According to a World Bank study, road deaths have gone up by 53% in India in the last 10 years starting from 2005. Young people in the age bracket of 15-34 years account for 54% of all road deaths. India also holds the dubious distinction of being the No. 1 country in road deaths since 2006.

“After I became the minister of road transport and highways, instead of accidents coming down, they have actually gone up by 4%. I feel very sad about it. However, I do hope that the number would come down by half in the first five-year of our term,” Gadkari said.

Gadkari introduced the MV (Amendment) Bill in Lok Sabha on August 9, 2016, which proposes to increase the compensation for death in a hit-and-run case to R2 lakh from R25,000. It also defines good Samaritan as a person who renders emergency medical or non-medical assistance to a victim at the scene of an accident.

Several reasons, including non-availability of crossover facilities, inappropriate movement of pedestrians along and across highways, high speed, lack of visibility and lack of proper training of drivers are responsible for a large number of road deaths in the country.

The Gadkari-led ministry has taken a slew of measures, including identifying black or accident-prone spots throughout the width and length of the country.

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His ministry has firmed up a plan to spend Rs 11,000 crore to fix such black spots in the next five years.

Admitting that the need for proper training of drivers before they are issued with driving licences, Gadkari said 30% of drivers’ licenses are bogus, but a proper system is being put in place to tackle the issue.

Giving estimates to various works undertaken by his ministry, Gadkari said projects worth R4.6 lakh crore has already been awarded for both road and shipping sectors, which would go up to R6 lakh crore by the end of March. He also said that 15,000 km of highway projects would be awarded in the current fiscal.

He also said that the government was slowly moving toward the target of building 40-41 km of highways per day.