New Delhi: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has imposed a penalty of Rs 50 lakh on a contractor and terminated some officials after a video shared on social media showed vehicles hitting a seemingly unwanted indentation on the Delhi-Vadodara Expressway and going airborne.
According to a statement by the Ministry, the matter has been inquired into and strict action has been taken against responsible officers and agencies. "The location in the video uploaded on Instagram shot before 07.09.2024, and uploaded on dated 10.09.2024, pertains to Package 9 of Delhi-Vadodara Expressway," the ministry said in the statement issued Friday evening.
The video shows multiple cars approaching a set of barricades on the expressway. Suddenly each vehicle is seen hitting some sort of a speed breaker or a seemingly unwanted indentation on the highway, leading the cars to jump and be airborne before crashing to the ground, but luckily not overturning.
The ministry said it has imposed a penalty of Rs 50 Lakh on the contractor for not attending to the defects in time. Besides, the Team Leader-cum-Resident Engineer of Authority Engineer has been terminated due to poor supervision and lapses in the services.
"Concerned Site Engineer has also been terminated. Concerned PD and Manager (Tech) have been issued Show Cause Notice for the lapses," the Ministry said in the statement.
It said the location in the video was temporarily rectified (due to ongoing continuous rains in the region) on an immediate basis on September 7. "Permanent rectification could be taken up immediately once the rain subsides," the ministry said.
An investigation team of domain experts comprising Prof. K.S. Reddy, IIT Kharagpur and Prof. G.V. Rao, IIT Gandhinagar has been constituted to ascertain the causes of distress and remedial measures of the affected stretches of the expressway, it said. "M/s Sriram Institute, New Delhi has been deployed for collecting and testing of the Samples from the site," read the statement.
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