On August 29th 2018, Mr Ranjit Gadgil of Parisar was appointed as a member of the District Road Safety Committee (DRSC) of Pune. This is an important step for Parisar to be able to make interventions through an official platform.
On receiving the Centre's notification in September 2017, the DRSC was set up in January 2018 and has met twice till date. The committee is chaired by MP Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil and the membership constitutes of DCPs of Pune and PCMC (Pimpri-Chinchwad) along with other Traffic Police, District Collector, Pune Municipal Commissioner, RTOs, MPs and MLAs from various constituencies, members from health sector and representatives from civil society.
The primary agenda of this committee is to suggest, discuss and implement safety measures on Pune roads to bring down the rapidly increasing accident rates. Mr. Ranjit Gadgil was invited to join the Committee and was welcomed yesterday by the Chairperson, where he proposed several points regarding collecting data of accident cases in a scientific manner, pedestrianisation and road design, attention to safety of vulnerable road users, focusing on enforcement along with awareness including helmet compliance, equipments that could be purchased through the Road Safety Fund for better monitoring (breath analysers, GPS equipment), among others.
The points were well received but due to shortage of time could not be discussed in detail. The Chairperson has asked for all inputs in writing to be able to discuss them at the next meeting. Apart from the appointment on the committee, Parisar has also been meeting several officials on one-to-one interactions including the newly appointed DCP (Traffic), MP Anil Shirole, the TC. The response from all of them has been very positive so far. We now hope that the Road Safety work gets an impetus, and we are able to implement the measures in the near future.
