The High Court on Tuesday asked the government authorities to remove scattered shops along the highways and keep unauthorised vehicles off-limits from roads to ensure safe movement of people and speedy vehicles and prevent road accidents.

The court also asked the authorities to remove the illegal structures and stop parking that create obstructions to running vehicles on highways.

The court asked the secretaries of the home ministry, the Local Government Division and the Department of Roads and Highways to submit reports within three months.

The bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Md Atabullah issued the directive after hearing a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer SM Badrul Islam, seeking directives to remove illegal structures and vehicle parking from highways across the country.

The court also asked the secretaries to explain in four weeks their failures to remove illegal structures like haat-bazar and unauthorised vehicles, creating obstructions for the safe movement of commuters and running vehicles on highways.

The High Court’s fresh order to keep unauthorised vehicles off-limits on the highways and remove haat-bazar came as the government showed indifference to a series of directives issued by the High Court and the government authorities earlier over the issues.

In 2022, the Roads and Highways Police reported 256 makeshift haat-bazars across the highways in different parts of the country.

The police said that slow and unauthorised vehicles coming to the highways from districts caused severe traffic jams, created obstructions to the safe movement of people and vehicles, and killed people in accidents.

At least 5,024 people were killed and 7,495 others were injured in 5,495 road crashes in 2023, according to a report released by the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority on Tuesday.

According to the Road Safety Foundation, 6,284 people were killed, while Nirapad Sarak Chai reported the deaths of 4,289 people in a road accident in the past year.

The World Health Organisation’s Global Report on  Road Safety, released on December 13, 2023, reported the deaths of 31,578 people in road crashes in Bangladesh in 2021, against the police report of 5,084 people in the same year.

The petitioner’s lawyer, M Sarwar Ahmed, told the court that the 20-kilometre road from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport to Joydevpur was caught in traffic jams at all times.

He identified the traffic jams on the route because of the delay in implementing the BRT project.

On December 15, 2021, the High Court directed the BTRA chairman and the inspector general of police to remove illegal battery-run three-wheelers and easy bikes from the roads immediately.

The court also asked the respondents to explain why their failure to identify illegal battery-run three-wheelers and easy bikes running on the streets would not be declared illegal.

A bench of Justice Mamnoon Rahman and Justice Khandaker Diliruzzaman passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by Kazi Zashimul Islam, the president of BAAG Eco Motors Limited, which has been manufacturing environment-friendly electronic three-wheelers in the country since 2018.

Zashim challenged the legality of importing illegal battery-run three-wheelers and easy bikes and the manufacture of such environmentally hazardous vehicles in Bangladesh.

Secretaries of the ministries of environment, forest, and climate change, road and transport and bridges, and industries, BRTA’s chairman, the IGP, the National Board of Revenue, and the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority’s executive chairman were asked to reply to the rule within four weeks.

On April 4, 2022, the Appellate Division allowed battery-run three-wheelers known as ‘easy-bikes’ to ply on all roads except highways across the country.

A three-judge bench, chaired by chief justice Hasan Foez Siddique, gave the permission after modifying a High Court order that directed the authorities to remove illegal battery-run three-wheeler ‘easy-bikes’ from roads.

The chief justice, however, observed that the operation of three-wheelers and easy bikes on the highways led to accidents.

The Appellate Division modified the High Court’s order after hearing an application filed by some importers and manufacturers of battery-run easy-bikes challenging the legality of the High Court’s order.

The petitioners are Bangladesh Electronic Three-Wheeler Manufacturing and Merchant Association president Kamal Uddin Ahmed, the association’s general secretary Ahsan Samad, and other merchants Md Monir Uddin, Zakir Hossain, Promode Bandhu Saha, Abu Sufian Raton, Atifur Rahman, and Moazzam Hossain.

The cabinet committee on law and order on several occasions in the past ordered authorities concerned to evict weekly markets and bazaars from highways across the country and remove all unauthorised structures from roadsides.

But no effective measures have been taken so far to free the highways from illegal establishments.

Since August 1, 2015, the road transport and bridges ministry has imposed a ban on three-wheelers and non-motorised vehicles on different national highways.

Lastly, on April 28, 2019, a committee headed by former shipping minister Shajahan Khan submitted 111 recommendations to the prime minister with a view to bringing back order on roads and reducing the number of accidents across the country.

Some of these recommendations related to the national highways include the removal of highway-side kitchen markets, infrastructure, and shops.

These directives have already been mentioned in the Motor Vehicles Ordinance, 1983, the Road Transport Act, 2018, the Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006, and traffic laws.

One of the three recommendations said that there will be no market, infrastructure, or shops at 10 metres of space on both sides of the highway, illegal kitchen markets have to be evicted from the sides of highways; and if there is any important structure, experts will have to measure the safety distance.

Another recommendation said that leases have to be cancelled to remove the highway-side kitchen markets.

The last recommendation said that during the building market, besides the highways, the shops’ entrances have to be given on the back side, and there have to be roadside barricades.

The report also said that in 2017, the highway police gave a list of 226 kitchen markets besides highways, out of which 184 were under lease for Tk 64.02 crore. In 2018, the number of these kitchen markets increased to 230.