Funds For Road Safety  

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is primarily responsible for development and maintenance of National Highways (NHs). Apart from this, the Ministry also allocates funds to the State Governments/Union Territories (UTs) for development of State Roads as per the provisions of the CRF Act, 2000 as amended by the Finance Act from time to time. Decision has been taken recently to earmark ten percent of such funds allocated to the State Governments /UTs for road safety works.The Ministry has fixed a sanction ceiling of Rs. 600 crore for taking up Road Safety works on NHs for the year 2016-17. Further, the Ministry has a budget of about Rs. 80 crore for implementing schemes to promote road safety through measures such as awareness campaigns, imparting driving training, etc. It has been decided to take up several items of engineering measures for rectification of identified black spots on NHs and State roads by implementing road safety works such as provision of service roads, improvement of junctions, provision of Foot Over Bridges/Underpasses, taking up of road safety audits and follow up actions thereto, etc.

As per the latest issue of the “World Road Statistics” (WRS) 2015, brought out by the International Road Federation, Geneva, the highest number of fatalities in road accidents in the world for the year 2013 was reported to be India (1,37,572), followed by United States (32,719) and Russian Federation (27,025) for the same year. State/UT-wise details of total Number of Road Accidents and Persons killed in India for the calendar year 2015 are given below :

State/UTs – wise details of total number of Road Accidents and Persons killed in India for the calendar year 2015

This information was given by Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways,       Shri Pon. Radhakrishnan in a written reply to a Question in the Rajya Sabha today.