BHUBANESWAR : As Odisha failed to reduce road fatalities despite measures, the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety (SCCoRS) has appointed a Delhi-based audit agency to assess the extent and quality of actions taken by the State government.
As directed by the SCCoRS, Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd (DIMTS) will carry out the assessment in three states including Odisha. The two other states are West Bengal and Goa. Road fatalities have assumed alarming proportions in Odisha and despite the direction of the Supreme Court Committee to reduce the deaths by 50 pc by 2020, the State has registered a 29 pc rise in road mishap deaths in the last seven years.
The deaths due to road accidents rose from 3,931 in 2014 to 5,081 in 2021 even as the apex court panel had issued directions for initiating steps to reduce the fatalities by 10 pc every year from 2015 onwards.
Although fatalities had dropped marginally - 11.15 pc in 2020 compared to 2019 due to lockdown following the Covid-19 pandemic, it again increased by 7.24 pc last year exposing the shoddy enforcement measures.
Odisha is among the top 10 states where the accident fatality rate (death per 100 accidents) was above the national average. It was 48.2 in the State against the national average of 36.65. Over-speeding contributed to 69 pc of the deaths followed by violation of helmet law (41 pc) and hit and run cases (20 pc).
“The State has missed the deadline set by the Supreme Court Committee for reducing road accident fatalities. Since there is no tangible impact of measures put in place by the State government, the Committee has entrusted the national agency to assess and check whether the actions taken are of good use,” said a Transport department official.
Prior to the assessment, the DIMTS will hold a discussion with the stake holding departments for information and other support required on ground data collection and verification. Joint Commissioner Transport (Road Safety) Sanjay Kumar Biswal has been nominated as nodal officer to facilitate and coordinate with the audit team.