Advocacy

More than one and a half lakh people die in road accidents in India every year. With about 14,000 deaths due to road mishaps in the year 2019 (NCRB), Maharashtra ranks second in the country. Rapidly growing infrastructure, along with the wildly growing road transportation, is posing serious threats to human lives. Since decades we have been facing a lot of issues related to bad roads and traffic congestions, the most common causes for them being potholes, unkempt and poorly designed roads and substandard footpath conditions. These issues lead to accidents, many a times even fatalities and most affected by them are pedestrians, cyclists and two wheeler riders. Given these issues, to reduce the number of casualties in road accidents, the Central Government has amended the Motor Vehicles Act in August 2019 (MVA19).

In a public notice dated 29 December 2000 the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) announced its intention to widen 335 roads of 6 meters to 9 meters. There was no mention in the notice or anywhere else about the reason behind this move. In fact other than badly labeled maps of the affected locations and shoddily pasted notices on trees and electric poles there was no mention of the reasons behind the proposal.

A response by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to a letter sent by NGO Parisar regarding the status of implementation of the Pune’s parking policy stated that the policy has been passed by its General Body Meeting vide resolution 1092 dated 23/3/2018, but it has not been implemented yet due to the Mayor’s unavailability for a meeting related to the issue. 

It has been over two years since it was resolved that under the Chairmanship of the Mayor, a committee will be appointed to identify five streets in Pune to implement the policy on an experimental basis.

SUM Net members Parisar and Centre for Environment Education organised a workshop to discuss the draft rules of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. The State Government is required to prepare the Rules for implementation of the Act. In addition to the Rules, the State Government is also required to frame a Scheme for Street Vendors (“Second Schedule”) after due consultations with the local authority and the Town Vending Committee.