By Kanu Sarda
New Delhi, July 20 (IANS) Ticking off the city government for its “apathy” towards public safety and noting with concern the burgeoning traffic on the streets, the Delhi High Court Monday while ruling on the infamous BMW hit-and-run case, observed that the situation “is likely to worsen” with the advent of the cheap car Nano.

Justice Kailash Gambhir, in his 274-page judgement, said: “Public safety is the last in the list of priority of the government - slayer BRT corridors, killer Blueline buses and slaughterer Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, and very recently unfortunately the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation of which every citizen is most proud of, has joined the list of state apathy towards the citizens. Considering the above data, it is manifest that public safety is an area of great concern to India, which has recorded one of the highest accident rates in the world.”

The court reduced the five years’ imprisonment of Sanjeev Nanda to two years.

Nanda, who is a British national, was returning from a party in suburban Gurgaon with two friends in his luxury BMW car in the early hours of Jan 10, 1999, when he mowed down six people in south Delhi’s Lodhi Colony area.

“Incident management needs improvement, both on highways and within cities, towns and villages. All Indian cities are already struggling with traffic flow problems due to the various types of vehicles on the road, the lack of need-based road and traffic design and engineering, and the unchecked growth of private vehicles and with the entry of the new cheap car ‘Nano’ on the roads of India very soon, the situation is likely to worsen,” the court observed. It also asked the government to bring in strict legislation to ensure public safety.

Criticising the lack of road safety planning, the court said: “The absence of intermodal planning is leading to poor connectivity between various modes of transport and poor passenger satisfaction. Most of the times after a mishappening due to poor strategy of the government on public safety, instead of taking responsibility and coming up with stricter laws and better public safety planning, the government shirks its responsibility by suggesting that the citizens, and especially pedestrians, should be more careful on the road.”

“Today, India is making a mark in the world map due to myriad reasons but the internal situation of the country when it comes to public safety is gloomy. It is high time that the government should become sensitive to the plight of the citizens and come up with stringent laws and better planning to curb drunken driving and such other menaces in the society which are reasons for fear in the mind of the pedestrians, each day, when they move out of their homes, whether they would safely reach home,” said the judge.

A recent survey in Delhi has found that drivers of more than 45 percent of vehicles involved in accidents consume alcohol and 50 percent of the road accidents happen because of drunken driving.

“As the Indian economy is booming, the changes in the lifestyle of people are so visible. Even as darkness falls on the capital, the streets are full of cars, motorcycles, scooters, trucks, tankers and state transport buses. There are no stop signs, no speed limits and as the heavy vehicles go zig-zag on the roads, it is hard to ignore the disturbing reality - many of the commercial and private drivers behind the wheels are drunk and no one checks them,” he said.

Quoting the report of the Department of Road Transport and Highway, the court said, “India holds the dubious distinction of registering the highest number of road accidents in the world, the number of road accidents in India is three times higher than that prevailing in developed countries. Rash driving and road accidents and consequent deaths have made India the land of highest deaths in road accidents.”

“India with 1.3 lakh accidents has pushed China back to second position. This is despite India having less than 1 percent of the world’s vehicle population. India’s road mishaps account for 10 percent of the toll.”

The court also relied on the report by Planning Commission which said that the social cost of road accidents in India stands at Rs.55,000 crore annually that constitutes three percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).