Jaipur Tanker Blast | 'Govt Steps Not Sufficient, Serious Probe Needed': Rajasthan HC Takes Suo Moto Cognizance

The Rajasthan High Court has taken suo motu cognizance of the December 20th massive fire incident caused by a collision between a gas tanker and multiple vehicles on the Jaipur-Ajmer National Highway, which claimed the lives of at least 14 people. The Court has also raised serious concerns about road safety and the effectiveness of existing preventive measures.

The Court observed that over the past years, many regions of the country are experiencing an increase of extremely large and severe fire and that such fires directly impacted lives, human health, safety, livelihood, etc.

The Court was also of the view that occurrence of fires by chemical or LPG has attained a very serious concern for disaster management within Government, private sector and public at large.

These disasters may be traumatic in their impacts on human beings and have resulted in the casualties and also damages the nature and property, the Court noted.

Furthermore, the court also referred to the world's worst disaster like "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" in the year 1984 where over thousands of people died due to accidental release of toxic gas Methyl Iso Cynate (MIC) and the year 2009 fire incident which occurred in Jaipur resulting in several deaths, causing severe burn injuries to multiple persons and carrying huge damage to several properties.

"Such accidents are significant in terms of injuries, pain, suffering, loss of lives, damage to properties and environment. India continued to witness a series of chemical accidents even after Bhopal had demonstrated the vulnerability of the country. Only in last decade, 130 significant chemical accidents were reported in India, which resulted into 259 deaths and 563 number of persons with major injuries," the Court remarked.

In its order, the Court has also underscored that that such incidents can be avoided, if proper cautions have been taken by the Government with regard to road safety. Road safety is one of the major problems on roads and highways.

"Every year thousands of people die while crossing the roads, U-turns and black spots. These accidents result in huge loss of human kind and economy. It is right time and high time for the Government to identify these black spots and adopt all the preventing measures to safe human life and all living beings. Danger alarm holdings can be fixed to alert the people to remain cautious while passing or crossing such U-turns and black spots," the Court observed.

Against this backdrop, noting that the Central Government has ordered for a payment of Rs.2 Lakhs to the families of the deceased persons and Rs.50,000/- to the injured persons for the fire incident, and a Committee of six members has been constituted to enquire about the reasons of the incident, a bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhandh emphasised that these steps are not sufficient.

The Court opined that the matter requires immediate serious enquiry and investigation and appropriate amount of compensation is required to be paid to the family members of the deceased, the injured persons and to all the victims whose vehicles and properties have been damaged.

Thus, issuing notices to the Union of India, Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India, New Delhi, Chief Secretary, Government of Rajasthan, Secretary, Disaster Management, Relief & Civil Defence Department and Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government Secretariat, Jaipur, the Court has asked them as to why the following directions be not issued to them:

(i) for holding an enquiry against all the defaulting persons and non-action on the part of the administration in not performing of statutory duty and causing negligence in occurrence of such unfortunate in such incident.

(ii) for awarding adequate amount of compensation to the family members of the deceased, injured and all the victims whose vehicles and properties have been damaged in this fire incident.

(iii) for shifting of the hazardous factories and godowns where highly inflammable chemicals, gases, etc. are manufactured and stored for distribution to the places away from the thickly populated areas.

(iv) for strict implementation of the provisions of the Acts, as referred in Para-8 of this order and for implementation of disaster management plan in all the revenue districts to save the lives of all living beings.

(v) for taking appropriate steps to complete the construction works of the bridges and over bridges within a time bound framework and

(vi) for framing appropriate schemes/policies provide a separate way/passage to such vehicles who carrying highly inflammable gases, chemical, hazardous articles, etc. to avoid any unwanted incident in future.

(vii) for identifying the black spots and dangerous U-turns and for adopting preventive measures to safe human life and all living beings by fixing danger alarm holdings on the highways.

The Chief Secretary, Government of Rajasthan as well as all the Secretaries of all the respondent-Departments have been directed to place on record the report regarding the steps taken by the Central and State Government on the issue involved in this petition. The petition has been listed for consideration on January 10.

As per the media reports, the nfortunate incident occurred when an LPG tanker travelling from Ajmer to Jaipur attempted to take a U-Turn near a School, which is also known as black spot.

A truck approaching from opposite side collided with the tanker which resulted into a massive fire which spread into 800 meter area and burnt dozens of vehicles plying nearby and claimed many lives and injured over 30 people.

Case title - IN RE: In the matter of Massive Fire Broke out at JaipurAjmer-Kishangarh-Bhankrota Highway

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