India will achieve 50% reduction in road fatalities by 2025 confidence on halving road accident deaths from about 1.5 lakh per annum by 2025 as against the global target of 2030, Union road transport minister, Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday.
Quoting data collected by the Transport Research Wing (TRW) of his ministry at a webinar organised by Road Safety Network, Gadkari said there were 3,212 less fatalities in five states – Tamil Nadu, Gujrat, Maharashtra, Delhi and Punjab – in 2019 compared to last year.
Interestingly, this came barely days after the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released data for the same year, which showed that four out of these five states had recorded 2,742 fewer deaths and Maharashtra had recorded 745 more fatalities.
The comparison of road fatality numbers in these five states prepared by TRW and NCRB for both 2018 and 2019 shows that the numbers are the same only in the case of Tamil Nadu. In the case of the remaining four states, the NCRB and TRW have reported different figures. For example, while the NCRB report says 14,608 persons died in road crashes in Maharashtra during 2019, the TRW data show that 12,788 persons were killed in road accidents.
The details of four other states accessed by TOI show that Rajasthan and Karnataka are the two states where there is no difference between the figures of NCRB and TRW. In the case of the other two states – Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, the two agencies have reported different numbers. One such example is UP. While NCRB report says 23,281 persons died in road crashes in 2019, the TRW data show that 22,655 persons were killed in such accidents.
Despite the fact that both the agencies collect data based on FIRs and TRW gets additional data from state transport departments, the difference in figures has been a perennial issue, which the government has not been able to fix so far.
Earlier addressing the webinar, Gadkari informed that his ministry has taken a lot of initiatives to reduce road accidents. He said the World Bank and ADB are providing Rs 7,000 crore loan each to remove black spots from the National Highways network. Gadkari said nearly Rs 20,000 crore has been spent on removing the black spots.
Recognising the important role of various stake-holders, he said the government needs cooperation of universities, educational institutions, NGOs, state governments and civil society to tide over this crisis.
Source: Times of India
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