'Fewer straight roads, rash highway driving main reasons for rise in accidents'

The number of accidents in Maharashtra have gone up in the first three months of 2022 when compared to the corresponding period last year and these may have been the result of fewer straight roads and rash driving on highways state transport minister Anil Parab said on ThursdayThis year Maharashtra witnessed 11900 accidents just between January to March as compared to 29493 accidents in all of 2021 and 24971 accidents through 2020Speaking at an event where the state governments faceless RTOs scheme was launched to provide people six services related to the sector online Parab said a meeting had been called to discuss this rise and enforce mitigating solutionsMaharashtra sadly has a higher accident rate There are a few reasons that we have found out Maharashtra has very few straight roads Secondly vehicles are being driven rashly on new straight roads or big highways that have built he saidIn order to reduce accidents every taluka has been given targets to identify black spots take corrective measures We will come to know about the outcome of these steps after three months he addedParab said the state government had received a report on stopping the issuance of autorickshaw permits but will need the Centres nod to do soThe minister who is also chairman of Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation MSRTC said the state run entity will induct 3000 new buses comprising 2000 electric and 1000 CNGrun as many existing vehicles will need to be scrappedQueried about taxi and autorickshaw unions seeking fare hikes due to rise in fuel prices over the past few months Parab said the subject of giving fare hike to autorickshaws and taxis in Mumbai Metropolitan Region is under active consideration and talks with unions are underwaySpeaking on the faceless RTO scheme Parab said services comprising driving licence renewal change in driving licence address duplicate driving licence duplicate vehicle registration certificate change in address and NOC for transferring driving licence or vehicle to another state will be given online and people need not visit RTOsNearly 20 lakh people used to visit the offices of the transport department for these services Henceforth people wont need to visit transport department offices These faceless services will be Aadhar based so there is no chance of duplication or cheating he addedThe minister said Maharashtras transport department has been providing 118 different services to citizens of which 80 are online and now six have been addedTransport commissioner Avinash Dhakane said the Union government has asked that 18 online faceless services be provided of which a few like online learning license facility and vehicle registration at dealers point started in June last year itselfHe said his department had received some complaints about online learning licence and discussions are being held with NIC to address the issueAlso an online portal has been developed for giving permission for overdimensional consignmentsToday the system we tested is foolproof and it has been checked several times Dhakane assertedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever