Meet the Man Responsible for Liquor Ban on Highways in India
Mangaluru: A man, who got paralysed neck down at the age of 26 in a road accident, has taken it as a mission of his life to make Indian roads safer. He lives in Chandigarh, where around 1 crore liquor bottles were sold between April 1, 2016, and March 28 this year. According to the excise policy, released by Chandigarh administration last Thursday, the residents of the city consume 30,000 liquor bottles daily on an average. And, he procured an order from the Supreme Court in December last year that directed all the liquor shops and poppy husks vends along the highways across the country to down the shutters.
Meet Harman Singh Sidhu – man who tirelessly works to make roads safer. Harman Singh Sidhu was only 26 when a road accident confined him to his wheelchair. Sidhu had gone to Renuka Lake in Himachal Pradesh. It was the month of October and winter was setting in. On his way back home with his three friends, Sidhu spotted a leopard cub as the sun was waiting to rise up on the horizon in the jungle. They followed the cub expecting to see more wild animals. But, his car skidded off the hilly road.
Sidhu was in the backseat as he watched his car spinning like a top before falling 70 feet deep. Sidhu suffered major injuries in his spinal cord rendering him paralysed neck down. Sidhu took some time to come to the terms that at the age of 26 his fate was confined to the wheels of a chair. But, in two years’ time, Sidhu was determined to make Indian roads safer. Sidhu founded NGO Arrive SAFE, which has led several road safety awareness campaigns in association with World Health Organization and the United Nations. Arrive SAFE founder Harman Singh Sidhu, who filed PIL leading to a ban on liquor sale along the highways.
At Arrive SAFE, Sidhu was involved with many surveys on road safety. While conducting these surveys Sidhu noticed the number of people dying in accidents caused by drunken driving. According to Arrive SAFE website, driving under the influence of alcohol finally is responsible for 30 to 50 per cent of road deaths and serious causalities worldwide. It further says about one-third of the drivers of motorized two-wheelers in Delhi and about 44 per cent of crash victims in Bengaluru were found to be under the influence of alcohol in a study.
Sidhu made up his mind to file a PIL. But, he first sought data through RTI. According to the RTI response of the National Highway Authority of India there were 185 liquor shops vends on a 291 kilometres stretch of National Highway 1 in Punjab and Haryana alone. This meant that there was one liquor shop vend at every 1.5 kilometers on the highway. PILs were filed in the High Courts of Punjab and Haryana and Rajasthan. The high courts gave favourable judgment’s. The states moved the Supreme Court, which imposed a ban on liquor shops and poppy husks vends along the highways across the country which came into force on April 1.
Inputs from India Today
