BHOPAL: During a recent trip to the United States, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan boasted that the roads in MP are better than those in the US. However, the statistics available with the Dial 100 -- the emergency response service of the MP police -- expose the hollowness of the CM's grandiose claims.
A total of 2,30,771 road accidents were reported to the emergency dial service since its inception in November 2015.
Out of these 2,14,715 were minor accidents while 10,828 were serious. In the state, which is ruled by the BJP, party that has become a champion of gau raksha (protection of cow), as many as 5228 road accidents were caused due to cows being run over.
Over the past 22 months, 330 accidents were reported daily to the Dial 100 service. As many as 15 of them were major incidents. Seven cases of cows being hit and run over were also reported during the same period.
According to sources at the Dial 100 service, reckless driving and bad condition of roads are the two major reasons for the accidents.
A city wise break up of these accidents show that the state's commercial capital Indore topped the chart with 13,919 accidents. It was followed by the state's administrative and political capital Bhopal, which saw 12,685 accidents. These two cities were followed by Jabalpur (8760), Satna (8647), Gwalior (8612), Ujjain (8564), Morena (8301), Bhind (8177), Rewa (7875) and Sagar (7413). A total of 1.37 lakh plus accidents were reported from 41 other districts of the state between November 2015 and September 2017.
The statistics pertaining to the three categories of accidents -- minor accidents, major accidents and cows being run over -- between July and September showed that there were 513 serious accidents, 9385 minor accidents 199 cases of cows being run over.
Also, statistics showed that among the top 30 kinds of emergencies reported to Dial 100 service between November 1, 2015, and September 30, 2017, road accidents occupied the third spot after calls pertaining to simple injuries and incidents of the nuisance caused by drunkards.