The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the state to reply to the PIL seeking the court’s direction to the government, ministry of transportation, and transport commissioner to cancel permits grant
The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the state to reply to the PIL seeking the court’s direction to the government, ministry of transportation, and transport commissioner to cancel permits granted to use light motor vehicles as “school vans”.
A division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice M.S. Sonak was hearing the PIL filed by PTA United Forum through advocates Rama Subramanian and M. Ramesh, highlighting the fact that school vans, run by private associations, did not follow any safety regulations that were mandatory for school buses and thus were unsafe for children to ride in.
PTA United Forum’s vice president Lata Nayar told The Asian Age that since school vans were run by private associations, they did not have to follow the same rules as school buses which were run by the schools and thus, avoided using safety measures. The petitioner’s contention was that school buses run by schools had to follow the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and Maharashtra Motor Vehicles (Regulations for School Buses) Rules, 2011, which made it mandatory for operators to have at least one female attendant in the bus apart from a barrier between the driver and children. However, there were no such rules for school vans which put children’s safety in jeopardy. The petitioner also said that RTO conducted regular checks to make sure that school buses were complying with the rules and were safe for children to ride but when it came to school vans, no such checks were conducted.
The petitioner prayed that school vans and buses be made to follow the same rules when it came to the safety of children. The counsel representing PTA requested the court to stop the state from issuing any permits to operators using vans, which came under the category of LMVs for ferrying school children.
