Answer:
The Ministry of Transport received a petition sent by the residents against the authorities when they realized that the authorities were contracting a new motorway through the housing estate.
Step-by-step explanation:
The active voice is the mostly used grammatical structure wherein the subject comes first, followed by the verb and then the object. The reverse is the case with the passive voice as the object becomes the subject of the sentence. The word order is reversed but the meaning of the sentence remains unchanged.
However, the reader might become confused with the passive voice as clarity is reduced. In the sentence above, the Ministry of Transport who were the object became the subject, and the the subject, 'residents', the object.