BMC impounds 63 vehicles across six wards; parking lot occupancy goes up

The first day of implementation of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) new parking rule saw action against 63 vehicle-owners for illegal parking. The civic body collected ₹1.8 lakh in fines from 18 defaulters while the rest are yet to cough up the amount. The rules saw mixed reactions from people.

The Hindu had reported that the BMC’s new parking rules would be implemented from Sunday.

With weekend revellers coming out in large numbers throughout the day, 63 illegally parked vehicles, across six wards in the city, were towed away to designated parking lots.

Signboards at these no-parking zones directed owners of these cars, autorickshaws and two-wheelers to report to the assigned parking lot. While 18 people paid fines of ₹10,000 each and claimed their vehicles, the rest are yet to do so.

“We had held multiple awareness drives over the past few days, yet people parked in no-parking zones. Hence, we towed the vehicle away by deploying two towing vans and 40 people,” said Ashok Khairnar, assistant municipal commissioner of H East ward.

In G South ward, which has the highest number of public parking lots of the 23 selected for this exercise, the number of vehicles increased as compared to those parked there usually. In the six parking lots in the ward, 1,345 vehicles are parked on an average on Sundays. But this time, 1,555 vehicles were parked.

“This shows that we were successful in directing people to the parking lots. In my ward, parking lots are free, yet people would not park there. Though the fine collected by our ward is less, we managed to achieve the objective of this exercise in a day,” Devendrakumar Jain, assistant municipal commissioner, G South ward, said. The fine collected from the exercise is supposed to be used for development of these wards.

However, not all corporators are pleased with the move. Samajwadi Party leader Rais Shaikh and leader of opposition Ravi Raja have maintained that the policy was brought in without taking public representatives into confidence.

“The policy was passed in the group leaders’ meeting. All group leaders were present for the meeting,” said a statement issued by the administration on Sunday.