New Delhi: The friends, after attending a college festival in Noida, went to a pub in CP and around 1am they drove towards Murthal (about 50km from Delhi) to eat. The speeding car lost control at a T-point and crashed into the divider near Hudson Lane in Mukherjee Nagar, killing two of her friends. More than 70% of the accidents on Delhi roads happen between midnight and 6am, according to the traffic police. The capital reported 215 fatal accidents till February 28 this year. In 2017, 213 cases were seen in the same period. Police officers said that in 50% of the cases, drivers claimed they couldn’t see the victim because of light from the other side of the road or because of another vehicle in front of them. The other accidents happened because of bad roads or encroachments. From midnight to 6am, major traffic signals are put on blinking mode or don’t have policemen to monitor traffic. Last week, a biker was crushed by a truck on the Lajpat Nagar flyover when he tried to avoid hitting some bricks lying on the road and slipped. While traffic policemen are present on the roads till 11pm, policing past midnight is solely dependent on the local police teams. According to the temporal trend of accidents in the capital, the midnight-2am and 4am-6am slots are considered the most dangerous as trucks are allowed to enter the city and the traffic volume is high. The traffic police study found that 55% of the accidents were caused because of speeding as drivers were unable to slow down their vehicles at traffic signals and ended up hitting a divider or another vehicle. A similar case was seen on Tolstoy Marg in Lutyens’ Delhi last week when the driver could not slam the brakes on time after spotting an autorickshaw on the way. The study also found that in 40% of the cases, both the victims and the accused drivers were in the age group of 19-30 years. Alarmingly, 6% of the drivers found to be involved in accidents were underage. Apart from inadequate checks for speeding and drunk driving, the police found that 30% of the accidents were because of encroachments on the road, while another 15% happened due to light reflecting on the windshield of the vehicle. Of the 750 accidents reported past midnight last year, almost 300 were hit and run cases as there was no one to see or catch the accused, according to the study. Also, most roads where accidents took place were not under CCTV surveillance. According to the traffic police data, roads around Najafgarh, Dwarka, Model Town and Mehrauli were found to be most prone to fatal accidents past midnight. The police attributed this to speeding and reckless driving.

Chandigarh : No new taxes, Haryana Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu presented a Budget pegged at a record Rs 1,15,198.29 crore for the 2018-19 fiscal, an increase of 12.6 per cent over the Budget last year (2017-18). Targeting revenue receipts of Rs 76,933.02 crore, the state will spend Rs 85,186.53 crore during 2018-19. There will be a revenue deficit of Rs 8,253.51 crore. The Budget clearly focuses on agriculture with a 51 per cent increase in allocation, that also includes Haryana Kissan Pradhikaran. The aim is to make agriculture more sustainable. The minister’s Budget speech lasted over 96 minutes. With Assembly elections only a year away, he announced Rs 100 crore for the SYL canal and said the allocation could be raised to Rs 1,000 crore, if need be. A sum of Rs 44,911.16 crore has been allocated for schemes to attain 15 “sustainable development goals” as envisaged by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This makes Haryana the first and the only state in the country to follow the UNDP socio-economic parameters for development over the next 15 years. These clearly specify that all future budgetary allocations to departments will be performance-based. On the flip side, the state’s debt liability, that was Rs 70,931 crore in 2014-15 when the BJP government came to power, has gone up by 127 per cent to Rs 1,61,159 crore. The government has launched a cashless medical scheme for government employees and pensioners for which the upper limit of Rs 5 lakh per admission has been done away with. An asset management cell has been created to identify government properties within and outside the state. A non-banking finance company — Haryana State Financial Services Ltd — has been set up for managing surplus funds of public enterprises.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, seeking time to meet them for resolving the issue of sealing of shops in the national capital. In his letter to the prime minister, he stressed on bringing a Bill in Parliament to remove anomalies in the law, which are the reasons behind sealing of commercial establishments, and warned that unemployment caused by the drive could impact law and order situation in the city. "The reason behind sealing is anomalies in the law. It is the responsibility of the Central government to remove these anomalies," the chief minister said. Kejriwal had yesterday threatened that he would go on hunger strike if the sealing drive is not stopped by March 31. Traders earn their livelihood honestly and pay tax. But, they are suffering due to sealing. There is only one solution now. A Bill has to be brought in Parliament to remove anomalies in the law and save traders from unemployment, he said. In his letter to Modi, the chief minister said, "The traders are on the verge of starvation and each shop is means of livelihood for many people. If all of them are rendered unemployed (due to sealing) then it may impact law and order situation." Seeking an appointment with the prime minister, Kejriwal demanded that a Bill should be brought in Parliament immediately to stop the sealing drive. In his letter to Rahul Gandhi, the chief minister sought an appointment with him and said sealing of commercial establishments is driving lakhs of people unemployed. "A solution to this problem should be found by rising above politics. This issue needs to be strongly raised in Parliament and pressure should be exerted on the Centre to bring a Bill over it," Kejriwal wrote to the Congress president. The sealing drive was undertaken by the municipal corporations of the national capital on the directions of a Supreme Court-appointed committee in December last year. Under the drive, hundreds of commercial establishments have been sealed so far due to non-payment of conversion charges and violations of Delhi Master Plan.

Approximately 30,000 farmers are marching towards Mumbai. The march started from Nashik, with the number of people swelling as they make their way through different areas. They plan to reach Mumbai by Sunday, and to block the access to the state legislature building from Monday. They are demanding for the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report to be implemented, which includes farmers getting 1.5 times the production cost on their produce. They also demand a complete waiver of loans and electricity bills.

Chandigarh : Chief Minister of Punjab Capt Amarinder Singh decided during the Cabinet meeting to form a sub-committee to suggest ways and means to end the menace of illegal mining in the state. The three-member Cabinet sub-committee, headed by Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and comprising Rural Development and Panchayats Minister Tript Rajinder Bajwa and Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, will study the entire issue, suggest ways and means to curb illegal mining, including plugging loopholes in the mining policy. The move follows crackdown ordered by the Chief Minister on illegal mining in Nawanshahr and Jalandhar districts after he yesterday spotted “unauthorised” activity on the Sutlej riverbed on his way to Kartarpur in a helicopter. To send across a stern message, Capt Amarinder also decided to convene a meeting of the deputy commissioners, senior superintendents of police (SSPs) and mining officers of nearly 11 districts, where complaints related to illegal mining activity are rampant, tomorrow. Earlier, during the pre-Budget meeting with the legislators, there was an increasing chorus among a section of the legislators to act firmly against those having direct and indirect stakes in the mining business. Some of the MLAs even went to the extent of decontrolling the sand and gravel mining. Nawanshahar legislator Anagad Saini and some other MLAs demanded that those behind the illegal activity and those providing the JCBs and porcelain machines should be brought to book.