Municipal corporations may take over parking lots

All city parking lots, including those run by the DDA, may be taken over by the municipal corporations in the future. Hamari Jamatia reports.

All city parking lots, including those run by the DDA, may be taken over by the municipal corporations in the future.

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Political leaders have planned to ask the lieutenant governor to transfer the rights of operation. According to them, any agency that runs a separate surface parking is breaking the law.

Rajesh Gehlot, chairman, standing committee, said the move to lay claim had started because they noticed that the public works department (PWD) had built a surface parking lot under the Naraina flyover.

Gehlot, in a letter to the municipal commissioner on Tuesday, had asked him to take appropriate action in the matter as some parking sites fell under the jurisdiction of the civic body.

Referring to news reports about the parking lots, Gehlot wrote to commissioner Manish Gupta, "It is astonishing to see that the PWD has opened the parking under Naraina flyover.”

Gehlot also directed the commissioner to prepare a report on such parking sites that belonged to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) so that necessary action could be taken to acquire them.

Gehlot said that all these parking lots, including the new ones under flyovers, were under the control of the South Corporation and no other agency had the right to operate them.

The corporations will even try to wrest the parkings from the Delhi Metro, but will leave the multi-level parking lots alone. "Multi-level parkings are a different issue since they are built by different agencies at a high cost; so we cannot ask to operate them. But surface parkings do not need much investment and so their operations should be with the corporations,” Gehlot said.