Poor, young worst hit in accidents, reveals report

NEW DELHI: The poor and the young (in the age-group of 15 to 30 years) are the worst impacted in road crashes, an evaluation of India's first cash-less scheme for accident victims has revealed. According to the interim report, nearly 75 per cent of the crash victims on Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch of NH-8 were the poorest.

The evaluation carried out by the PGI, Chandigarh has revealed how the number of crashes recorded or registered by police are far less than the actual numbers.

The difference in number of crashes as recorded by police and insurance companies for claims between September 2014 and September 2015 has been found to be more than five times in some months.

“Data collection is very poor in our country. There is a concrete finding to suggest how we need to have a robust compilation of road crash details,“ a transport ministry official said.

In fact, World Health Organisation had estimated the total fatalities in road crashes in India at around 2.07 lakh while government data put it at 1.37 lakh in 2013.

After rolling out the first scheme to provide first 48 hours' free medical care costing up to Rs 30,000 on the Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch, the road transport ministry had implemented this on Mumbai-Vadodara and Ranchi-Mahulia stretches.

While 13,252 road crash victims were provided medical help on the GurgaonFaridabad stretch, in case of the Mumbai-Vadodara stretch there were 2,238 beneficiaries. There were 1,318 beneficiaries in the case of the Ranchi-Mahulia stretch. The average cost per beneficiary was around Rs 14,381.

The transport ministry has proposed to extend the cash-less scheme to the entire Golden Quadrilateral and East-West and North-South corridors, which will cost around Rs 254 crore annually .

A day after the Maharashtra CM defended his ministers allegedly involved in graft cases, Union minister Nitin Gadkari urged the state executive to be cautious.

Without naming anyone, Gadkari told them, “Today, we are in government... It is difficult to remain clean when in power.The coming days are challenging. Don't forget the school of thought and aim of our party.Ministers and leaders must change their approach."