Seven years after India introduced a legal mechanism to make road authorities and private entities accountable for serious failures in road design, construction and maintenance, the provision has yet to result in a reported penalty against an agency or contractor.
The issue centres on Section 198A of the Motor Vehicles Act, which covers designated authorities, contractors, consultants and concessionaires responsible for road infrastructure. The provision can apply when failure to comply with prescribed standards results in death or disability. Current reports citing government data furnished to Parliament indicate that the provision has not produced a prosecution so far.
Editorial Insight
Key Highlights
Important points readers should notice.
Issue/Event: Seven years after Section 198A was introduced, no road agency or contractor has reportedly been penalised under the provision.
Location: India
Authority/Organisation: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways / designated road authorities
Action Taken: The 2026 legal amendment increased the maximum penalty under Section 198A from ₹1 lakh to ₹50 lakh.
Impact: The change increases the potential financial consequence of engineering failures but also highlights the importance of scientific crash investigation and clear road-design standards.
The legal framework has nevertheless changed significantly in 2026. Under amendments contained in the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2026, the maximum penalty under Section 198A for such failures has been raised to ₹50 lakh, compared with the earlier maximum fine of ₹1 lakh. The amended provision also specifies how the amount is to be handled for national highways and roads other than national highways.
The central challenge, however, is not only the size of the penalty. Investigators must establish a connection between a road-engineering failure and the crash. In many serious accidents, several factors—including vehicle speed, driver behaviour, weather, visibility and road conditions—can operate together, making engineering responsibility harder to establish.
The 2019 framework requires courts, when considering responsibility, to examine factors including road design, expected traffic, maintenance standards, the condition in which road users could reasonably expect to find the road, whether authorities knew or should have known about a hazardous condition, and whether adequate warning signs were provided.
Editorial Analysis
Why This Matters
Road crashes are often discussed primarily in terms of driver behaviour and vehicle safety. Section 198A places another part of the road-safety chain under scrutiny: the infrastructure itself. If a road's design, construction or maintenance contributes to a fatal or disabling crash, determining responsibility requires more than examining the accident scene. It requires technical evidence about road standards, maintenance records, warnings, traffic conditions and the condition of the infrastructure. The increase in the maximum penalty to ₹50 lakh makes that investigative process more consequential.
This creates an important distinction in road-safety accountability: identifying that a road was dangerous is not necessarily enough. Authorities also need a documented investigative process capable of establishing what engineering standard applied, whether it was breached and whether that breach contributed to the death or disability.
The 2026 changes therefore raise a broader question for India's road-safety system: can stronger penalties produce accountability without equally strong crash-investigation and engineering-assessment mechanisms?
