Cars fitted with beacons or boards of government agencies are staying in front of the Kolkata airport’s terminal building, in violation of rules, as the drivers are refusing to take a 300-400m detour and park the vehicles in a place temporarily earmarked for them, said officials.
Airport sources said direct access to a lane, created with barricades, where so-called VIP vehicles are supposed to be parked is now closed because of Metro construction work.
“More than a week back, the drivers of some of the VIP cars had started parking the vehicles in the lane. Police were diverting the vehicles to the designated area. But now, since direct access to the lane has been blocked because of Metro work and the cars are required to make a detour, the vehicles are again being parked in front of the terminal on the arrival level,” a senior airport official said on Sunday.
“Metro work will continue for another 15 to 20 days. After that we hope we will be able to make the VIP cars park in the designated lane.”
Another official at the airport said: “When employees of Omega Enterprises, which manages parking at the airport and the lanes in front of the terminal, ask them to move to the VIP parking lot, the drivers of the cars and the security personnel accompanying them tell us the road is closed. When we ask them to make a detour of 300-400m to reach the parking lot, they say that would lead to a delay in picking up the VIPs.”
The Telegraph recently ran a fortnight-long campaign on inconveniences faced by
fliers at the Kolkata airport. One of the major problems is posed by VIP cars that remain parked on the kerbside in front of the terminal on the arrival level in violation of rules.
The parked cars trigger chaos in front of the terminal and force fliers to lug their bags and suitcases across lanes to board their vehicles.
On Sunday, this newspaper spent a couple of hours at the airport and spotted a long queue of vehicles parked on the kerbside in front of the terminal on the arrival level.
This, despite repeated announcements made by parking agency officials that keeping vehicles parked right in front of the terminal was prohibited and would attract fines.
Nearly all the vehicles had either beacons fitted on their roofs or had multiple stickers or boards announcing that they belong to some government department or other.
There were multiple vehicles that bore stickers of various state governments on their front and rear windshields.
There were several vehicles fitted with boards with “Police” written on them. All of them were parked in the first lane in front of the terminal.
The Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate has put up adequate signage for the VIP parking lot but those are hardly of any use.
A beacon-fitted sedan with a sticker on its bonnet that read “Govt of India” and another car that had stickers on both windshields that read “Govt of Tripura” remained parked for the entire duration this newspaper was there.
There were other cars parked as well.
During the period, not a single employee of Omerga Enterprises was seen asking the drivers to move.
“We are making announcements asking drivers of VIP cars to move to the designated parking lot but they rarely pay heed to us,” said an official of Omega.
Vehicles are allowed seven minutes of free parking in front of the terminal. An airport official said a vehicle can be fined Rs 500 if it stays in front of the terminal for more than seven minutes.
But the rule doesn’t seem to apply to VIP vehicles.