MP: 13,000 KM of Roads in State are Scarred and Broken, Reports Highest Number of Accidents

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is presently on a visit to the United States, has said that roads in his home state are better than those in America.

“When I took the road route after landing at the airport in Washington then I felt that the roads in Madhya Pradesh are far better than those in America,” he said while addressing a business seminar organised by the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum in Washington DC.

He later tweeted the same that went viral on social media.

But a fact-check to confirm the veracity of the chief minister’s claims proves otherwise.

Around 13,000 km of roads in the state are scarred and broken. Around 2,689 km of roads in urban areas are badly potholed and an estimated sum of Rs 386 crore is required for its repair. 

The road department is yet to built 1,410.63 km of coal tar and concrete roads in seven divisions of the state, including Bhopal.

The Chouhan government has been frequently criticised for the potholed roads in the state capital as well as in other parts of the state. The BJP has been governing the state for the last 12 years.

The Central government has earlier accepted that the condition of roads in Madhya Pradesh is worst in the country. The state reports highest number of road accident cases throughout the country.

Biju Janata Dal’s Lok Sabha MP raised a question about road accidents in India due to potholes. To that the then Union Minister of State for Road Transport, Pon Radhakrishnan, replied that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of road accident cases resulting from potholes, based on 2015 data.

Of the total 10,876 road accidents cases recorded from across the country because of broken roads, 3,070 accidents took place in the central Indian state. It was a little over 28% of the total such accidents. MP was followed by Maharashtra with 1,867 accidents and Uttar Pradesh with 1,196 accidents.

More than 40 people have lost their lives on Jabalpur-Raisen Road in the past five years. A total of 8,700 km of state highway is in pathetic condition, said a report published in Bhopal edition of Dainik Bhaskar on October 26.

An estimate suggests that Madhya Pradesh needs Rs 6,000 crore to repair and contruct roads in the state.

Meanwhile, a day after people poked fun on Chouhan for saying roads in his state are better than those in the US, his government has released a series of photographs with an aim to counter the ridicule and back the claims made by the chief minister.
 

The comparison photo series titled ‘Roads in US Vs Roads in MP’, the public relations department of the state government has contrasted the state’s roads (which are smooth) with what appear to be badly potholed and scarred roads in cities such as Los Angeles and New York.

Notably, the US has the world’s longest and biggest road network that exceeds 65.8 lakh km.

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