Court concerned over excessive parking charges

NEW DELHI - Expressing concern over the excessive parking charges by various agencies in the capital, the Delhi High Court Wednesday issued notice to all the civic agencies.

Justice Kailash Gambhir issued notice to Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and Delhi Police.

The judge said: “With the growing increase in the population of vehicles, not only the citizens find it difficult to park their vehicles but they are made to shell out unreasonable amounts for parking their vehicles for long duration.”

The court asked all the agencies to produce their parking policies by May 25.

“Parking no doubt is a perennial problem and every citizen is confronted with this on daily basis and presently there exists no visible system to know if a particular parking site is authorised or not,” the court said.

The court was hearing a petition filed by S.C. Jain through his counsel Sugriva Dubey seeking directions not to charge more than Rs. 10 a day for parking.

In the present case, petitioner had to shell out Rs.700 for parking his vehicle at the parking site at the New Delhi Railway Station.

“There is a need to build multi-level parking in the capital,” Dubey said.

The petitioner also demanded that the civic agencies should not auction footpaths for parking.