Earliest passage of Motor Vehicles Bill is crucial to saving thousands of lives

The newly-adopted 2030 agenda for sustainable development has set an ambitious target of halving the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2020. Without sustained action, road traffic crashes are predicted to become the seventh leading cause of death by 2030. More than 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes and around 50 million are severely injured. Out of 10 lives lost in traffic, nine are lost in low and middle-income countries even though these countries have approximately 54 per cent of the world’s vehicles only.

India is one of the signatories of the Brasilia Declaration, which is a call to rethink transportation policies and highlights strategies to ensure the safety of all road users, particularly by improving laws and enforcement.

However in India, an average of 1.5 lakh people die in a year.

The Central and state governments need to be accountable for this sorry state of affairs because of the weak law and poor enforcement of the same.

Strengthening the Law

Strengthening the law is the first step in the right direction. Motor Vehicle (Amendment) (MVA) Bill 2017 is important due to radical changes in the law, which is 30 years old. It proposes high penalties for various traffic offences, three-year jail for parents of minor drivers causing fatal accidents, compulsory insurance cover to all road users etc.

This amendment bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha in August 2016, is proposing 68 amendments, out of which 23 are related to road safety.

Provision for Good Samaritans

Fifty per cent of those who killed in road accidents could have been saved, if they could have been rendered timely assistance. A World Health Organisation (WHO) report says that “skilled and empowered bystanders play a crucial role in saving lives” and “in order to enable bystanders to come forward and help injured persons, a supportive legal and ethical environment is needed”.

The Supreme Court in March 2016 approved the guidelines issued by the Centre for the protection of good samaritans from being unnecessarily harassed by police or any other authority. However, these guidelines were not implemented effectively at the state level and the police force needs to get used to these guidelines. MVA Bill, 2017 have incorporated a section on good samaritans, which clearly defines the roles, responsibilities and protective measures for good samaritans, gives some ray of hope.

Concerns of the States

The MVA Bill, 2017 is presently before the Rajya Sabha. After introducing in Lok Sabha, the bill had under gone elaborate review by Parliamentary Standing Committee on transport, tourism and culture, which submitted its report in February 2017 and the Lok Sabha passed the bill in April 2017 without much discussion. Later when the bill was placed in the Rajya Sabha, several states and opposition political parties expressed their concerns about certain provisions of the bill. Hence, it was referred to a Rajya Sabha select committee to addr-ess the concerns. Some are concerned about section 66A and 88A of the amendment bill, which empower Centre to form National Transportation Policy and for establishing a framework for grant of transport permits.

Some other concerns raised were about taking away the licensing powers from regional transport authorities, centralising the collection of transport related taxes by the Central government etc. Southern states have also collectively objected to some of the provisions, such as doing away with the minimum educational qualification for driving license applicants, ceiling of insurers’ liability, exempting private vehicles under mandatory automated fitness testing etc. Some political parties opined that the bill, subverted the principle of federalism by seeking to abrogate powers of the state government relating to road transport.

Now or Never

Will the bill see the light of the day? Though the select committee did elaborate consultation process with all the key stakeholders for more than four months, finally it submitted the report to the Rajya Sabha, without proposing any amendment to the bill passed by the Lok Sabha, on the assurance of the transport minister Nitin Gadkari that all concerns will be addressed on the floor of the house, when the bill will be taken up for discussions.

Minister’s logic was that it can save time, without sending the further amended bill back to Lok Sabha again. But finally when the bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on July 23, the minister, who is having the image as the champion of road safety and committed to amend the bill, was missing in Rajya Sabha.

This annoyed the Oppos-ition benches. In the abse-nce of the Cabinet minister, minister of state (MoS) for transport Mansukh L. Mandaviya introduced the bill in Rajya Sabha. Thou-gh there were consensuses on the provisions related to road safety, during the discussions in Rajya Sabha, most of the MPs, who spoke from Oppo-sition political parties, have expressed their objections to dilution of the state’s powers. Half way the discussion was abandoned, since the minister was not present to hear the discussions, which is very unfortunate. Now, it is the time for the transport minister Nitin Gadkari to fulfil the assurance given to members of the select committee, address concerns and save the bill. Though minister had agreed for informal consultations with various political parties to iron out the differences, even after two weeks, no discussion had taken place, and hence created a new deadlock. Until and unless the minister takes the initiative, it is doubtful whether Rajya Sabha will again take up the bill for discussion in this session.

We earnestly hope that Mr Gadkari will take charge of the things and ensure its smooth passage in this session of the Parliament itself with the support of all political parties, in the interest of thousands of common people, who are dying on Indian roads. If it doesn’t happen, it is for sure, this bill will not get passed during the present tenure of the government, since the entire county is moving towards an election mode. This bill is facing a situation of ‘now or never’. Let us hope that it will see light of the day.

George Cheriyan is director and Madhu Sudan Sharma is a senior programme officer at CUTS International, a global public policy research and advocacy group