19 august 2024 : As many as 404 people have died and 129 were seriously injured after the vehicles they were travelling in crashed into animals, mostly cattle, in Chhattisgarh over a period of five and a half years, according to police data. This includes nine people killed last month.
After the Chhattisgarh High Court in July last year highlighted the issue of accidents taking place due to stray cattle on the roads, state government authorities and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) have moved out a total of 26,713 cattle from roads and highways in the period between August last year and July this year.
Chief Secretary Amitabh Jain on June 27 held a meeting on the issue over video-conferencing with all district collectors in the state. At present, the cattle moved from roads are taken to shelters and a fine is collected from their owners, if any. During the June meeting, an idea was floated to create a sanctuary for the stray cattle, an official said.
Road accidents on the rise
Road accident deaths as a whole have gone up in Chhattisgarh, according to police data. Such deaths in the state rose by 5.6% in 2023, and in the first half of this year, it rose by 8.72%.
In May, the Chhattisgarh High Court had ordered government authorities to submit an affidavit on compliance with road safety directives in the wake of a fatal accident in Kawardha on May 21, where 19 people from a tribal community were killed.
As reported by The Indian Express in August last year, deaths from road accidents have been steadily increasing in the state every year, except in 2020 when lockdowns due to the pandemic kept numbers lower.
In 2023, such deaths crossed the 6,000-mark, rising to 6,166 from 5,834 deaths in 2022. This year until July, 3,629 people have died in road accidents.
The government is working towards its aim of bringing down accident deaths by 10% this year by giving focus to education, engineering, enforcement and emergency care – the four Es.
Assistant Inspector General Sanjay Sharma, chairman of the interdepartmental lead agency for road safety in Chhattisgarh, said the government is working on the four Es. “As part of education, we are training teachers in all government schools to teach the importance of road safety. Further, short films will be shown to students to create awareness on the issue. Five medium-sized vehicles will also move in public places and schools to create awareness.”
On the second E – engineering – he said: “The PWD, for the first time, has received Rs 60 crore to take corrective measures on engineering issues at accident prone spots to improve road safety.”
On enforcement of traffic rules, he said more than one lakh cases have been filed and that fines amounting to Rs 8.53 crore have been collected. “We have sent a proposal to increase manpower,” he said.
On emergency care, he said: “Two new trauma centres have come up and six more trauma centres will be operational by the year end.”
At present, around 1,500 police personnel work in the traffic branch while the sanctioned strength is 1,400, with an additional force of 1,000 being roped in from other police branches. The requirement of manpower as per the norms of Bureau of Police Research and Development under the Ministry of Home Affairs, however, is 6,000.
The state has also been seeing a major increase in vehicles on the road, with 5 lakh new vehicles getting registered on average each year.