Centre plans to give ambulances to states to ensure quick help for highway accident victims: Gadkari

New Delhi, Dec 17 (PTI) Expressing concern over high fatalities in road accidents, Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said the Centre plans to provide states with modern ambulances with the condition that these vehicles must reach accident spots within 10 minutes.

Replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways acknowledged that the government has not been successful in reducing the number of deaths due to road accidents despite several measures to improve road infrastructure.

Gadkari was responding to a question of senior Congress member Pramod Tiwari, who sought to know the steps taken by the government on road safety.

Tiwari was referring to a road accident on the Yamuna Expressway on Tuesday.

"In our country, there are 5 lakh road accidents annually, causing around 1.8 lakh deaths," Gadkari said, adding that around 66 per cent of the deaths are in the age group of 18-34.

"This is terrible. We are trying hard (to reduce fatalities), but we have not been successful," the minister said.

Gadkari said the government has made efforts by improving road engineering, making enforcement of laws stricter and increasing penalties.

"Human behaviour is one of the biggest problems," the minister said, as he stressed the need to follow traffic rules.

Gadkari agreed that the ambulance should reach the accident sites within 10 minutes. He cited a study by IIM, which found that the lives of 50,000 people could have been saved had they received immediate and timely medical treatment.

Based on this study, the minister said, the government has decided that it would honour those helping accident victims by declaring them as 'Raahveers', and also providing a reward of Rs 25,000 each.

Gadkari said the ambulances will now also have special tools to evacuate people from accident spots.

"We have told states to have the same helpline number for ambulance service," he said.

Gadkari said it is not the job of NHAI to manage ambulance services.

Therefore, he said, "We have decided to have MoUs with states on a kilometre basis, wherein we will provide good quality ambulances to each state. But, our condition will be that ambulances must reach accident spots within 10 minutes".

The minister said the Centre is ready to provide 100-150 ambulances that they can operate in their systems.

On a separate question related to loose FASTags, Gadkari said this is a kind of fraud but assured the House that the problem has been addressed.

A loose FASTag is referred to as a FASTag that is not fixed on the vehicle's windscreen and carried in hand by the motorist.

In a written reply, the minister informed that as on 10th December, 2025, a total of 6,725 cases of "Tag in Hand" have been reported.

The government, through Indian Highways Management Company Ltd (IHMCL), has progressively strengthened the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for detecting and blacklisting 'loose FASTags' or 'tag-in-hand'.

As per the IHMCL's policy circular issued in August 2019, fee plaza operators are required to report such violations to the concerned acquirer bank and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

The issuer bank verifies the case and blacklists the non-compliant FASTag until the reported FASTag is affixed on the windscreen.

To streamline enforcement, a circular dated 26th June, 2025, introduced a structured reporting format, requiring fee collecting agencies to submit weekly data to a portal.

Based on these reports, IHMCL coordinates with NPCI to initiate blacklisting of such loose FASTags.

"Directives have been issued to all fee-collecting agencies and concessionaires from time to time regarding 'loose FASTag' or 'Tag-in-hand'," the minister said. PTI MJH HVA