Telangana high court questions silence on parking fee loot in public interest litigation

HYDERABAD: Expressing doubts on why GHMC officials and police are remaining silent over fleecing of people by commercial malls, film theatres, hospitals, etc., with huge parking fees, the Telangana high court has taken up the cause of the people as a public interest litigation plea.
The court, which made the municipal administration, town planning, disaster management, fire, police and labour departments as respondents, is set to seek answers from them as to why they are acting as mute spectators despite the fact that they accorded building permissions only after ensuring sufficient space for parking in each of such commercial establishments.

The high court has made the GHMC commissioner and other wings as respondents in the current PIL and wants to know from them why they are allowing the ‘parking fee loot’ despite a clear direction to them not to allow such levy of fees from the visitors.
The case will come up for hearing on Monday.
Both the building permit and the licence to run a business are granted only when the requirement of providing free parking space is provided to the visitors.
Though they have the powers to act against such errant malls, the official machinery tuned itself into a mute mode while the commercial establishments are charging heavy parking fees from the visitors.
Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili and Justice A Abhishek Reddy, members of the high court PIL committee, came across instances of heavy parking fees in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the state and directed the registry to convert this issue as a PIL and place it before an appropriate bench for adjudicating the issue and for passing fresh directions to control the unscrupulous commercial operators.