A draft road transport and safety bill is posted on the MORTH website. Click here to see the draft. It is a long, long piece of legislation by Indian standards, about 305 pages. The law also appears to try and cover anything and everything connected to road transport in one, giant, omnibus legislation.
I have read through it very fast once. THere seems to be an effort to start couple of authorities and one highway patrol force. The other effort is to centralize and make uniform various aspects such as driver's licenses, vehicle registration, road taxes etc. For our privatization fans, there appears to be an effort to open up competition in the road transport space. Penalties for offences are dramatically going up. For the cyclists, there is some regulation on safety equipments proposed.
Overall, the law is still a working draft. There is no mention of what present laws will have to be replaced or what changes will come into place. Legislation is open to comment. Therefore, this is a good time to influence the bill and have our voice heard. However, reviewing this bill is a lot of work. We will need help.... Plunge in folks and start commenting. There is no comment deadline posted.
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