ORDER :

1. The menace of road accidents is increasing day by day taking away the lives of thousands. One facet of cause of road accidents is plying of motor vehicles with excess load than permissible.

2. Before proverbial travelling into the litigation in these batch of writ petitions, it is apt to extract the observations of Justice V.R.Krishna Iyer in Rattan Singh v. State of Punjab (1979) 4 SCC 719). It reads as under:

"This is a ease which is more a portent than an event and is symbolic of the callous yet tragic traffic chaos and treacherous unsafety of public transportation – the besetting sin of our highways which are more like fatal facilities than means of mobility. More people die or road accidents than by most diseases, so much so the Indian highways are among the top killers of the country. What with frequent complaints of the State’s misfeasance in the maintenance of roads in good trim, the absence of public interest litigation to call State transport to order, and the lack of citizens’ tort consciousness, and what with the neglect in legislating into law no-fault liability and the induction on the roads of heavy duty vehicles beyond the capabilities of the highways system