Sachin Sharma, vice-president (operations) of Jaypee DSC Ventures Ltd, also gave a presentation on the steps taken by the company. He could not, however, give satisfactory replies to the queries posed by Anand’s family members and the district administration. When asked why safety measures were not in place, Sharma waived it off as not being part of the agreement.
The private operator of the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway has currently no right to levy toll charges from users of the stretch. That's what a probe carried out by an arm of the corporate affairs ministry has concluded. The probe says the operator started collecting toll on the basis of a provisional certificate without providing for facilities vital for the safety and smooth flow of traffic.
Acting on the probe findings of the Director General of Investigation and Registration, sources said the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) has sent a notice of inquiry to all stakeholders - NHAI, the private operator DS Constructions Ltd, departments concerned of the Delhi and Haryana governments ^ for deficient services which have been causing huge casualties besides inconvenience among users.
In 57 months between March 2003 and December 2007 on the said stretch, 119 persons lost their lives and 1,756 were injured. In the 14 months between January 2008 and March 2009 - after the expressway came up - more than 120 persons have lost lives and 100 have been injured
It is evident that NHAI has influenced the notified toll charges in a most deceptive manner resulting in undue gains to the private operator at the cost of public
The number of accidents on the Expressway has gone down drastically since the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) started putting up median fencing. But the Expressway still lacks several basic facilities.
One hundred people who died in 1,696 accidents on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway since January 23, 2008 are anonymous entities for both the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the concessionaire firm, DSC Limited. Which means that if they are asked to pay compensation as a result of an ongoing case in the Punjab and Haryana High Court - in which both are party - there is no way they can trace the victims.
In response to an RTI query, NHAI has admitted that it has no details of the people who died in accidents on the expressway. The RTI was filed by Delhi -based businessman K S Anand who lost his son on the expressway in March this year. DSC says it has been regularly filing accident reports, but keeping personal contact details on victims is not its duty. Despite repeated attempts, V K Rehjawat, NHAI's general manager and Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway project director, was not available for comments.
DSC officials said they had been following the norms prescribed in the concession agreement and sending the accident reports on time. ``Keeping the victims' contact details is the police department's responsibility, not ours,'' said N D Mehra, director, Delhi Gurgaon Superconnectivity Ltd, a subsidiary of DSC.
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