The State government on Thursday informed a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court that it had initiated steps to amend the motor vehicle rules to make it compulsory for city buses to have doors. The government conveyed the information to the Bench comprising Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice K. Vinod Chandran when a writ petition filed by Kohinoor Salim Khan of Kozhikode seeking a directive to immediately amend the rule 280 of the Kerala Motor Vehicles Rules which exempted city buses from installing doors came up for hearing.
The government submitted that the amendment had been proposed to the rule so that doors could be made mandatory for all the stage carriages, irrespective of their classification. The petitioner alleged that the accident involving bus passengers were taking place frequently simply because the buses did not have doors. He cited that an incident in which a girl was thrown out of a bus and killed in Kozhikode. He alleged that though the government had come out with a draft amendment, it had not seriously taken step to enact the same.
