Create awareness of school bus safety: Bombay HC to state government

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has directed the state to enumerate the steps taken by it to implement safety measures in school buses and whether it has created awareness among School Bus owners about the latest safety guidelines. The court also asked the state to submit the list of vehicles that were being used as school buses without following safety guidelines and whether school bus committees were formed in all schools in two weeks.

A division bench of justices Naresh Patil and Nitin Sambre was hearing a public interest litigation filed by the PTA United Forum seeking directions to the state government to ensure proper implementation of the school bus safety norms as laid down by the centre in the Motor Vehicles Act of 2012. Advocate Rama Subramanium appearing for the forum informed the court that despite rules and guidelines being formulated and a school bus being defined by the Act, the state had been issuing permits to vehicles with less than 12+1 seating capacity. 

She further said that such vehicles flouted all safety norms thus endangering the lives of school children and the state had failed to take any action. She also said that the Common Standard Agreement (CSA) to be signed between the school and bus owners was also not done in schools nor steps were taken to create awareness about setting up of school bus committees in schools that use contracted and uncontracted vehicles. 

However, government pleader Abhinandan Vagyani submitted that the state had been following its own set of guidelines for school bus safety.