New Delhi, December 21
On an average seven persons lose their lives daily trying to negotiate the high-density Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, built as part of the Golden Quadrilateral project to connect the capital to Mumbai.
When it opened for traffic, an estimated 1.30 lakh vehicles per day-in February 2007, the Highway was hailed as a “Gateway to India”, with the national and international airports located along its route. It was also credited as a historic achievement in the tolling history of the country, being the largest BOT (Build Operate Transfer) road project.
Built two years back, this access-controlled expressway is turning out to be an instrument of death, having claimed more than 100 lives due to complete neglect of safety norms by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), which steered clear of pedestrian safety while designing the highway.
In a shocking revelation made by the first analysis of public-private partnership in the implementation of NHAI’s road projects, the Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings has said no road safety audit was ever conducted in respect of the Delhi-Gurgaon project either at the planning or the Detailed Project Report (DPR) stage.
Also, the government followed no internal guidelines in determining the mode of execution of the project. First, it was to be constructed through a Special Purpose Vehicle but the NHAI later converted the mode to BOT-Toll to avoid the burden of toll collection, something the committee seriously objected to saying, “The government was more interested in the commercial interest of the Concessionaire than of the public.”
“There are just four subways and two foot over-bridges along the entire corridor. It is simply appalling to note that more than 100 lives were lost on the road in a relatively short period. We express our profound anguish over such scant regard shown to human life and deprecate the act of NHAI in completely ignoring the safety of pedestrians in designing the expressway and ignoring the local needs of people living on both sides of the highway,” the committee concluded in its December 16 report. The committee has now asked the NHAI to fix criminal liability of the Concessionaire, who manages the corridor and is therefore accountable for pedestrian deaths, a common feature along most expressways in India.
Further enquiries have revealed that RITES was the design consultant for the corridor, and it could not foresee the needs of locals, putting their lives to danger. Interestingly, only last year, the Central Road Research Organisation (CRRI) had noted with alarm the fact that road safety audit was not conducted in designing the expressway.
The corridor has no provision for road-warning signs where high-tension power lines are crossing the Expressway, removal of rings from drainage covers or training and deployment of marshals at the entry points for restricting two-wheelers from entering the high-traffic danger zone.
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‘107 deaths inevitable’
Union Transport Secretary Brahm Dutt, in his clarification to the panel on the deaths across the Expressway stretch, said since the project was new and the NHAI was doing something that large for the first time, it deserved that much of a “margin”. To be precise, 107 avoidable deaths occurred on the
Delhi-Gurgaon road, which saw about 1700 accidents since it opened to people two years ago. The panel has amply recorded in its report “government insensitivity” to human life.
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