Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Friday directed officials to establish a dedicated bureau to monitor traffic management and road safety in Telangana and asked them to study the feasibility of introducing a smart signalling system to reduce traffic congestion in the city.
During a review meeting on traffic management, road safety, drug prevention and security, the Chief Minister called for an institutional framework for the proposed bureau after conducting a comprehensive study of traffic and road safety requirements across the state.
Revanth Reddy said the bureau should be mandated to review measures for improving traffic regulation once every two or three months. He stressed that merely imposing traffic rules would not solve the problem, and called for greater emphasis on effective traffic regulation.
He directed officials to prepare traffic management plans taking into account weather changes, working hours and peak traffic periods, and said traffic impact studies should be conducted before taking up new infrastructure projects.
Referring to recent accidents, the Chief Minister said vehicles being parked indiscriminately on the Outer Ring Road were causing serious accidents and directed officials to take preventive measures and ensure continuous monitoring to prevent vehicles from being parked at unauthorised locations on the ORR.
He observed that traffic congestion was worsening in the Hyderabad Core Urban Region because motorists were frequently forced to stop at closely spaced traffic signals.
To move towards a signal-free city, he suggested constructing underpasses and elevated corridors in Hyderabad and asked officials to ensure uninterrupted vehicle movement and minimise stoppages at signals as far as possible. He also directed them to study the introduction of a smart signalling system to improve traffic flow in the city.
On drug prevention, the Chief Minister said the government was serious about curbing drug abuse and instructed officials to adopt a stringent approach and consider introducing tougher regulations to crack down on the menace.
He called for measures to prevent drug abuse in educational institutions, including obtaining declarations from students and making the managements of educational institutions accountable.
In government educational institutions, he said principals of the respective schools and colleges should be held responsible, and asked officials to examine the possibility of framing rules under which managements would be held accountable for any drug-related incident occurring within their campuses.
He also directed officials to establish a mechanism to identify drug-related activities outside campuses and provide information to the authorities. Educational institutions should be given not only authority but also responsibility, he said, calling for special units within institutions to identify changes in students’ behaviour at regular intervals and take timely action.
He suggested examining the feasibility of setting up a toll-free number and a dedicated QR code on educational campuses to enable students and others to provide information on drug-related activities. The Chief Minister called for a three-pronged strategy to prevent drug abuse in educational institutions. First, identifying students who consume drugs; second, helping those identified to overcome their addiction; and third, taking stringent action against those involved in supplying drugs.
He directed officials to consider sending first-time offenders caught consuming drugs to de-addiction centres, while examining strict punishment for those repeatedly caught in drug-related cases. He also suggested studying the possibility of bringing in a new law, if necessary, to deal firmly with drug-related offences.
Government advisers P Sudarshan Reddy and K. Ramakrishna Rao, Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju, DGP C.V. Anand, Chief Minister’s principal secretaries N. Sridhar and V. Seshadri, R&B special chief secretary Vikas Raj, finance principal secretary Sandeep Kumar Sultania, transport commissioner Ilambarthi, education secretary Yogita Rana, school education director Naveen Nicholas, and senior officials from various departments and the police department attended the review meeting.
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