The Chief Minister’s announcement making helmets compulsory for riders and pillions, along with authorising traffic police to issue challans using body cameras, is being projected as a step towards road safety. However, this selective enforcement exposes the government’s hypocrisy. Goan roads remain dangerously uneven, poorly designed, and full of patches, posing daily risks to commuters. These conditions violate basic road safety norms, yet the government has failed for years to address them. Instead of fixing unsafe roads, the BJP government appears more focused on extracting money from citizens through fines in the name of safety. True concern for public safety would begin with durable, well-planned roads, not laws that only empty citizens’ pockets. Penalising riders while ignoring hazardous infrastructure is nothing but governance failure disguised as discipline. If safety is truly the priority, the government must first make Goa’s roads safe to ride on”without excuses, without delay.
