A social justice bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit while asking railways to give a roadmap for operating crossings said that, the law enacted in 1989 for doing away with unmanned level crossings has not been implemented by the railways in the last 26 years.
Bench came heavily on Indian Railways, asking, “Why don’t you tell us when will you complete the task? There must be some road map for at least 203 accident-prone crossings. We are not sitting here for fun. You must tell us what you are doing in this regard”.
Bench also asked Indian Railways that, “Why do you bring more trains when you cannot protect the lives of people? Human life cannot be treated so cheaply. Safety is very important and you must take it seriously”.
As reported in Times of India, there are more than 11,000 unmanned crossings, out of which 203 have been marked as accident-prone. The unmanned crossings are responsible for the maximum number of train accidents at around 40%.