Path Breaker Harman Singh Sidhu
Who Made Highways Sensible
A man met with an accident and his car spun in the air many times before it landed 60-70ft down on its wheels. The impact of the accident was so huge that he suffered a spinal injury paralyzing him from neck down in 1996. Thus he was bound to a wheelchair at the young age of just 26.
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| Courtesy:arrivesafe.org |
The next few years of that man were a period of dejection, depression and hopelessness with the question" Why me ?" till he came to know that maximum number of injuries were due to road accidents and he was not alone.
That realization became a turning point for this man and gave him an aim to work for - road safety. He started holding awareness campaign and used RTI law to get information on road accidents.
| Coutesy: indiatimes.com |
The figures were alarming . One person dies every four minutes on Indian roads - the highest in the world. Several studies showed that alcohol is a major culprit. In 2012 there were 185 liquor vends on 291 km of national highways from Panipat to Jalandhar, that means 1 liquor vend every 1.5 km.
In 2012 this path breaker man Harman Singh Sidhu filed PIL in Punjab & Haryana seeking closure of liquor vends on national and state highways. In 2014 High Court ordered that "liquor vends should neither be accessible nor visible from highways". Harman started getting threatening calls from unknown numbers.
In 2014 Punjab & Haryana challenged order in Supreme Court and got a stay on state highways but in 2016 Supreme Court banned liquor sale on all highways.
The doughty crusader says that his job is not yet over. He and his team will continue to drive down on the highways to ensure compliance of the Supreme Court order.
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