Probe panel blames bus driver for Unnao accident
In response to the accident, the authorities have now decided to identify vehicles that are habitual offenders in order to deregister the same.
A three-member committee of the transport department has blamed the bus driver for the tragic rear-end collision with a milk tanker on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway near Unnao on Wednesday morning that left at least 18 people dead and 19 injured.
In response to the accident, the authorities have now decided to identify vehicles that are habitual offenders in order to deregister the same.
“The probe committee headed by deputy transport commissioner (Lucknow Zone) Surendra Singh has submitted its findings to us and action is being taken accordingly,” transport commissioner CB Singh said to HT.
“Though the double-decker bus registered with Mahoba ARTO operated without any valid papers for which an FIR has already been lodged against the bus owner, the accident as such was caused due to the negligence of the driver who, according to surviving passengers, dozed off just before the bus rammed into the tanker,” he said.
The bus, according to the committee head, started from Sitamarhi in Bihar on Tuesday, entering the Gorakhpur region in U.P. at 11pm the same day. Ekhalaq took over the steering in Gorakhpur and was driving the bus when the vehicle met with the accident near Unnao on Wednesday at round 4.30 am. The drivers of both the vehicles died in the accident.
The inquiry panel also found that the bus had no valid documents regarding road worthiness, tax insurance, pollution, permit and had over 80 challans issued against it since 2019.
The accident, according to the committee, could have been averted had the bus been impounded for operating on documents with expired validity despite repeated challans.
“The bus body also appeared to be fragile as it might not have been designed as per the approved design and make,” Surendra Singh said.
Following the submission of the inquiry report, the transport department is gearing up to show cause RTOs through whose regions the bus operated illegally in UP.
“We are sending notices to the RTOs, Gorakhpur, Basti, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Ghaziabad etc through whose regions the bus used to operate, and they failed to take appropriate action against the vehicle,” the transport commissioner said.
He said all RTOs in U.P. have been asked to prepare lists of vehicles without a valid fitness certificate and send SMS alerts twice to all such vehicles and finally deregister them after serving a final notice on them if they fail to get the fitness done.
“After one month, we will obtain certificates from all the RTOs, giving an undertaking that now there were no unfit vehicles on road in their regions,” he said.
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