Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started sticking posters on cars found illegally parked on roads at night, telling the owners to obtain permission from the civic body for night parking in front of their homes.
Earlier, the civic body used to put clamps on tyres of cars found illegally parked on roads at night. The practice has been discontinued.
As an alternative, the civic body is pasting posters on cars. The poster says that though the owner of the car is liable to be fined and the vehicle towed away, the KMC is giving the owner a final warning to follow the rule and obtain permission for night parking.
The owner of a four-wheeler has to pay Rs 500 a month to reserve a slot on the road in front of his or her home to park the car from 10pm to 7am.
“The vehicle has been found to be unauthorisedly parked at this place. As per KMC schedule the fine for unauthorised parking is Rs 1000. The vehicle is also liable to be towed away. This is the final warning to you either not to park this vehicle here or to obtain permission for night parking in front of your premises,” the poster reads.
A KMC official said owners would be allowed to park their cars in front of their homes provided there is space on the road for an ambulance and a fire tender to pass while the vehicle remains parked.
If a person pays and reserves a slot for night parking, the KMC will issue a sticker that the owner can paste on the front windshield. The car will not be prosecuted during raids if it remains parked at that place. “We will only allow them to reserve a parking space in front of their home. We will not allow parking anywhere else,” said the KMC official. “This facility is only to park cars on the road between 10pm and 7am.”
The KMC conducts night raids in various parts of the city to prosecute cars that remain parked on roads at night.
If a car on which a KMC team pastes a poster is found parked illegally again during a second raid, the owner will face prosecution. The KMC has requested the state transport department to provide it access to the data of VAHAN, a digital repository of all registered vehicles in the country.
The KMC will use VAHAN data to send a text message to the owner of the booked car. The owner has to pay the fine (Rs 1,000), without which the fitness certificate of the car will not be renewed. Thousands of cars remain parked on city roads at night. Many owners, KMC officials said, do not own a parking space.
The KMC has set a steep revenue target for the parking department in the current fiscal. The budget estimate for proceeds from car parking fee in 2022-23 was Rs 22.26 crore. In the 2023-24 fiscal, it is Rs 100 crore.