Nirbhaya scheme: Women to get buses with safety measures

Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari will dedicate buses with safety measures for women under the Nirbhaya Scheme to public in the national capital on Wednesday. 

The proposal was approved by the Union Cabinet in January 2014. The proposal include setting up of a unified system at the National Level (National Vehicle Security and Tracking System) and State level (City Command and Control Centre) for GPS tracking of the location, emergency buttons and video recording of incidents in public transport vehicles.

In the first phase, 32 cities of 13 states in the country with a population of 1 million or more will be covered. Total estimated cost of the project is Rs 1404.68 crore which will be funded by Ministry of Finance from the 'Nirbhaya Fund'.

Once the scheme is made operational in major cities, ensuring safe, reliable and comfortable public passenger bus service across the country will be made possible.

The major impact of the scheme will include maping of routes of the public vehicles; tracking of vehicles on the route; highlighting of violations through visual and text signals; panic button alert to transport and police through visual, text and voice; permit, registration and license cancellation based criteria for enforcement and providing safety and security to women and girl child in distress in minimum response time.

Video recording in Public Transport vehicles with large seating capacity will be used as evidence. This will act a preventive measure for probable offenders.