Nellore: The only highway connecting south coastal and north AP districts to most popular hill shrine in Tirumala located in Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's native Chittoor district and Bengaluru city has become a death trap, especially the 70-km stretch between Nayudupeta and Tirupati.
The road known as Naidupeta-Puthalapattu highway is notorious for fatal accidents and victims mostly are devotees either going to Tirumala or retuning home after the darshan of the Lord of Seven Hills.
The erstwhile Congress government had planned to convert it into a four-lane highway in 2009, but the proposal was put off due to lack of funds and NHs was asked to take over the road.
Though it is five years since NH came into the picture, the proposal to convert into four lanes has been lying in cold storage even as people are killed in gruesome mishaps in regular intervals.
There were as many as 61 deaths and 225 injuries in 147 major accidents on the highway between Nayudupeta and Srikalahasthi, falling under Nayudupeta circle, alone in the last three years.
The situation is no better in Srikalahasti and Tirupati section going by a sub inspector working in Yerpedu police station located on the highway.
Lamenting over the fatal accidents especially near Lalitha Nagar plots in his jurisdiction, sub-inspector V. Ramakrishna said his only plea to the Almighty, if he appears before him, will be to covert the road into a four-lane highway immediately.
There were 70 deaths and 98 grievous injuries in 37 accidents under Yerpedu police station limits during last three years. Nayudupeta Circle Inspector M. Rathnaiah attributed the high number of accidents on the road to number of bends, rash driving, violation of traffic rules, drunken driving, heavy traffic because of lorry and buses proceeding to Bengaluru and absence of lights in the junctions.
While stressing that widening the road to four lanes or six lanes with a divider is the lasting solution to contain the mishaps, he appealed to the RTC to increase frequency of buses to the villages abutting the highway to discourage people from using auto rickshaws. He observed that accidents involving autos are more on the road.
“On our part we have erected caution boards before accident prone areas and arranged speed breakers with the help of Roads & Buildings at village junction points besides barricades on accident prone areas” Mr Rathnaiah said.
