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Take prompt measures to curb accidents on Mum-A’bad highway: Palghar SP to NHAI

ByYogsh Naik
Feb 05, 2025 08:28 AM IST

Palghar SP requests NHAI to install crash barriers and signage on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway after 83 deaths in 82 accidents in 2024.

MUMBAI: Alarmed by the high rate of accidents on the Palghar stretch of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway, the Palghar superintendent of police Balasaheb Patil has written to the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to put up crash barriers and take several other corrective steps on the highway. The letter was written on January 21 after statistics showed that 83 persons had died in 82 accidents in 2024.

Mumbai, India, July 19, 2024: Heavy traffic jams on Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway due to potholes. (Photo by Azim Tamboli)
Mumbai, India, July 19, 2024: Heavy traffic jams on Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway due to potholes. (Photo by Azim Tamboli)

Several augmentation measures were suggested after industrialist Cyrus Mistry and his co-passenger Jehangir Pandole died on September 4, 2022, after their Mercedes crashed into the boundary wall of the Surya river bridge. However, in the following year, there were 182 accidents on the highway in Palghar alone, in which 106 people died and 64 were seriously injured.

The SP’s letter states that many serious accidents have been taking place on account of adequate measures not being taken. He has asked the NHAI to urgently put up crash barriers, appropriate direction signage and road blinkers to guide motorists so that accidents are reduced. Eighty-six kilometres of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway pass through the jurisdiction of the Talasari, Kasa and Manor police stations of Palghar district.

Noting that 83 persons had died in 82 accidents from January to December 2024, and 148 persons sustained major and minor injuries in other accidents, the SP has pointed out in his letter that concretisation work on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway has been left incomplete at places.

Sumit Kumar, the project director of NHAI, said that several concrete barriers adding up to nine kilometres were being constructed. “We have already put up metal crash barriers for 16 km and will install 70 km more,” he said. “We have also completed 103 km of concretisation out of the 112 km of highway inside Maharashtra.”

Kumar added that NHAI had just approved a plan for road signage worth 25.5 crore, and tenders would be issued soon. “We have given three ambulances, and are also giving one advanced life-support ambulance to be posted in areas where no medical facilities exist,” he said. “Also, the public health department is constructing a 200-bed trauma care hospital in Manor town.”

The hospital was still far from complete, said Kumar. Dr Ramdas Marad, Palghar district’s civil surgeon, said that the Public Works Department had completed the civil work and was in process of carrying out the electrical work.

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