SC Cracks Down on Highway Encroachments, Questions NHAI on Toll Plaza CCTV

The Supreme Court on Thursday flagged the issue of encroachment and stationary vehicles on highways and asked the National Highways Authority of India why it cannot install a camera surveillance system and monitoring rooms across toll plazas to deal with it. 

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, which was hearing a suo motu case related to an accident in Rajasthan's Phalodi area that claimed 15 lives, said that encroachment and stationary vehicles on highways were the two major



issues.

The top court directed the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways/NHAI to identify accident blackspots and critical areas and publish a comprehensive list of accident blackspots on national highways. 

"It is seen that national highways constitute approximately 2 per cent of India's total road length but account for nearly 30 per cent of all road fatalities. A road, particularly a high-speed expressway, must not become a corridor of peril due to administrative lethargy or infrastructural gaps," it had said.