The Union Road Ministry of India has allocated Rs110bn ($1.64bn) over the next five years to fix 726 black spots across the country in a move to reduce the increasing number of road fatalities.

Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari was quoted by The Economic Times as saying: "The fund will be used to fix engineering defects across.

"At some of these spots, over 100 people have lost their lives. We need to bring down road deaths by half."

"We need to bring down road deaths by half."

In terms of road accident deaths, India tops the list, with 138,000 people being killed every year. The country also accounts for 10% of road accident deaths worldwide. Every 4min, one person gets killed in road accidents.

Last year, more than 137,000 people were killed and over 300,000 were crippled in 500,000 road mishaps.

The minister stated that imroper road engineering and design, as well as bad driving, cause road accidents.

The government intends to impose penalties on companies and engineers responsible for constructing and designing faulty roads.

These provisions will be included in the next road safety bill to cut down the number of road accidents by half in the next five years.

Delhi will be the first city to get a share of the $1.64bn Central Road Fund to repair ten black spots that took away the lives of 84 people in 2014, reported Ddinews.gov.in.

A mobile app will be introduced by the road transport and highways ministry, which will enable people to upload pictures and details of black spots in their localities.

Gadkari added that road accidents cause annual loss of $8.2bn to $8.9bn, or 3% of the GDP, to the country.