BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday directed the police department to not hesitate or avoid registration of First Information Report (FIR) when any citizen approaches the jurisdictional police station with a complaint of serious injury or death caused due to potholes and bad condition of roads.
“We are permitting to implead the Home Department as a respondent in the backdrop of certain news reports that even though the citizens approach the police authorities for registering FIRs on account of serious injury or death caused due to bad condition of roads and potholes, the police authorities in most cases are neither responding to the citizens nor are filing FIRs”, said a division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Ashok S Kinagi in an order passed after hearing a PIL filed by Vijayan Menon and three others from Koramangala, in 2015.
Referring to its earlier order, dated February 6, 2020, in which it stated that the citizens are entitled to seek compensation when there is a loss of life or injury caused due to the poor condition of roads, the high court directed the BBMP to submit a response with data on whether such representations seeking compensation were received, the number of such representations or any compensation awarded on receipt of such representations.