Parking charges may go up across city

December 7, 2013

Hindustan Times (Delhi)
Ritam Halder
NEW DELHI: Parking charges may soon be hiked across Delhi.

SUNIL GHOSH / HT PHOTO -The proposal to increase parking rates may be scrapped again by the political wings of the municipal corporations in view of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

According to highly-placed sources, the three municipal corporations are set to propose increasing parkingcharges in the next budget session.They said the proposal for the budgets for the next financial year would be presented by the respective commissioners on Monday.

“The current parkingrates are abysmally low. There will be a proposal to hike this. A basic rate will be proposed, which will then be debated in the House. A final decision will be taken after the issue is discussed at length,” a senior North Delhi Municipal Corporation official told Hindustan Times.

In March 2012, the Lieutenant Governor (L-G) had approved a hike in parking chargesfrom ` 10 per hour to ` 20 per hour for cars. Under the new guidelines, the parkingrates for the first 30 minutes for a four-wheeler was to be ` 10 followed by ` 20 for an hour and ` 50 for three hours.

Currently, Delhiites pay ` 10 for 10 hours and ` 20 for 24 hours in the municipal parkinglots across the city.

The recommendations for the hike in parkingrates, which were made by the Delhi government-appointed committee onparking, however, were not accepted by the political wing of the corporations for the fear of a adverse reaction from the people in the Assembly elections.

Even in last year’s budget, the south, north and east corporations had rejected a hike inparking chargesproposed by the commissioners of the civic bodies.

“The leaders had said that people won’t be able to afford highparking charges due to inflation. This time, too, it might happen again due to political considerations over the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. We propose, they dispose,” a senior South civic body official, who wished not to be named, said.

Source-http://www.hindustantimes.com