Corporators from various parties slammed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) new parking policy, that has proposed levying a penalty up to ₹10,000 for unauthorised parking, demanding to know why the administration did not hold discussions or invite objections before announcing it.
The BMC wants to crack down on those who park on roadsides despite public parking being available in the vicinity and has said all roads in a 1-km radius of a public parking facilities will be declared no-parking zones.
Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi on June 19 said that the policy will be implemented from July 7. The decision was communicated to all officers and the media. However, public representatives were miffed that they were not consulted in the matter.
Samajwadi Party leader Rais Shaikh took a point of order in Monday’s general assembly opposing the policy. He said, “Under a scheme in the DCR, builders are supposed to hand over parking lots to BMC. Of the 44 multilevel parking lots BMC were supposed to get, only five have been handed over while builders have gotten full benefit of FSI. For instance in my area, a builder had received additional FSI for the four towers constructed by him in return for 1600 new parking spaces. However almost a decade later the parking has not been handed over to the corporation.”
Leader of opposition Ravi Raja said the administration did not discuss or even inform public representatives about the move, pointing out that they are answerable to people
NCP leader Rakhi Jadhav censured the government as plots that were supposed to be turned into parking lots, have not been utilised. “We cannot even give good footpaths, roads to people but are quick to levy a penalty,” she said.
Congress corporator Asif Zakaria said, “If every policy is being brought like this (directly), why are we wasting our time? In the past, an additional commissioner had brought a proposal for online booking of parking spaces. What happened to it? Administration is bringing new things every day. This policy will lead to big scams. This is dadagiri (bullying). Besides, of 34,000 parking spaces available, 20,000 are only in one ward. We need discussion. BMC should call for suggestions and objections.”
BJP corporator Prabhakar Shinde also believes a basic discussion on the matter should have taken place in the House or at least group leaders’ meeting. “Every corporator represents 50,000 people. Also, we are afraid this might turn into another hawking policy (that still has not been implemented). How many parking lots are in our possession? Lots of them were given away to builders. What was done to acquire them?” he asked.
Corporators have demanded that the policy be brought for discussion before implementation.