NEW DELHI: To ensure road safety, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has written to chief secretaries of all state governments to take necessary action to remove liquor shops from being located directly on the National Highways and not to issue fresh licences if the location is squarely on the National Highways.
NHAI Chairman Raghav Chandra has sent an alert to the state governments that they will refuse access permission to liquor shops that are located or wish to be located on National Highways.
The idea is that ban on sale of alcohol on the National Highways would help in reducing the road accidents due to drunken driving. According to NHAI, about 5 lakh road accidents with 1.5 lakh fatalities per annum are reported in the country, which is the highest in the world. The government has set a target of reducing accidental deaths by 50 per cent by 2020.
“The issue is so serious that the SC has appointed a committee under retired Supreme Court Judge K S Radhakrishnan to find ways by the different stakeholders to reduce accidents,” it said.
‘Mismanagement at check posts costs $21bn a year’
IIM study says delays at check posts and state borders for documentation checks and payment of various fees and taxes leads to a loss of over $21 billion per year
The study to access operational efficiency of freight transportation by road by the Transport Corporation of India (TCI) and IIM Calcutta, covering 28 routes was released by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari
The survey analysed the problems and prospects of multimodal transportation and the effect of seasonality on freight transportation by road in India. It found that the cost of delay was $6.6 billion per year and the cost of additional fuel consumption due to delay was $14.7 billion per annum
A comparison of the survey data for the years 2008-09, 2011-12 and 2014-15 shows that while the average vehicle speed has improved over the years, the average mileage of vehicles has remained almost the same
Conducted by Subrata Mitra, Professor of Operations Management, IIM Calcutta, it favours early introduction of GST to reduce paperwork and check post delays, potentially saving billions of US dollars in delay costs, and fuel consumption cost due to slow speed