Haryana Dy CM Chautala Escapes Road Accident, 1 Dead in Noida Collision: North's Freak Fog Smash-up

Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s car met with an accident near Haryana’s Agroha, while travelling from Hisar to Sirsa, late on Monday. The car collided with the police vehicle moving in his convoy due to dense fog on the route. While the deputy CM escaped unharmed, a police officer was injured.

An official said the car that collided with police’s Bolero was not the one in which Chautala was seated but a four-wheeler in his convoy. The collision happened when the police vehicle applied sudden brakes and the cars following in the convoy couldn’t see it due to dense fog, the official added.

Another accident was reported in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddha Nagar due to fog. One person was killed and at least 10 injured when their bus collided with a container vehicle in Dankaur area on Tuesday morning. Police said that the bus was carrying 60 passengers; injured have been taken to a hospital.

In Sitapur, eight people were injured when the van in which they were travelling hit a stationary truck on Tuesday morning amid low visibility due to dense fog. Four of the passengers sustained serious injuries in the accident that occurred near Kalli village under Misrikh police station area, police said.

The India Meteorological Department on Tuesday reported “lowest visibility” (in meters) at 5:30 am on Tuesday. While it was zero in Bathinda, Amritsar, Ganganagar, Patiala, Delhi (Palam) and Lucknow saw a visibility of 25, Delhi (Safdarjung) and Purnea had a visibility of 25, Ambala and Agra 200. Gorakhpur 300, Bareilly, Patna, Gaya and Kolkata witnessed visibility of 500.

The weather department said that dense to very dense fog conditions over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh will continue for the next two to three hours and improve gradually.

According to the IMD, very dense fog is when visibility is between 0 and 50 metres, 51 and 200 is dense, 201 and 500 moderate, and 501 and 1,000 shallow.

The Met office had on Monday forecast that the Indo-Gangetic plains may see “dense to very dense” fog over the next five days, which may result in cancellation and diversion of trains and flights. Satellite images showed a thick layer of fog over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The IMD also issued an advisory, saying difficult driving conditions on highways, some collisions and tripping of power lines are possible. “Likely train delays, diversions and cancellations. Airport operations are likely to be affected with flight delays and cancellations,” it said.

The dense fog led to pile-up on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, killing three people and injuring eight others. Police said that the accident occurred in Erva Katra police station area in which a truck, a sleeper bus and a car crashed into each other.

News agency PTI quoted a railway official as saying that in the wake of dense thick fog, around 20 trains were delayed by 15 minutes to 2 hours. The flights from Delhi airport, meanwhile, operated without any delay due to the implementation of Low Visibility Procedures for four hours starting from midnight. However, two Uttar Pradesh-bound flights had to be diverted and six others ran behind the schedule due to heavy fog on Monday morning.

One of the two diverted flights was 6E6815 (from Bengaluru to Kanpur). It landed at Lucknow airport due to bad weather conditions in Kanpur. Later, passengers were sent to Kanpur in a bus. The other flight — 6E 7127 — was diverted to Varanasi due to low visibility at Lucknow airport and the pilot not having the license to operate in a CAT 3 facility.

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