Officials wake up to mall parking woes

It's taken the authorities here nearly two decades to figure out that it is mandatory for malls and office complexes to reserve 75 of their parking space for visitors and just 25 per cent for the occupants. However, the rule for parking followed by the owners is exactly the opposite.

It's taken the authorities here nearly two decades to figure out that it is mandatory for malls and office complexes to reserve 75 of their parking space for visitors and just 25 per cent for the occupants. However, the rule for parking followed by the owners is exactly the opposite.

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As the current practice goes, almost the entire parking space in these buildings is either sold or leased out to the occupants/tenants by the building owners, while visitors park their vehicles on the roads or in parking lots outside the buildings.

This blatant flouting of guidelines came to the notice of senior police and district administration officials while conducting a routine inspection of several such swanky buildings on MG Road, Golf Course Road and in DLF Cybercity.

What's more, the enforcement wing of the town and country-planning (TCP) department has never penalised even a single owner for this.

Gurgaon Police Commissioner SS Deswal, who made a surprise visits to a number of buildings, said he was shocked to see that majority of the parking spaces in complex basements were lying vacant, while the roads were littered with vehicles causing hindrance to normal traffic movement.

"We will now act against such building owners and book them for obstructing traffic flow on the road. The TCP would take separate action for flouting building norms against them," Deswal said.

"The visitors' vehicles were being denied entry inside these buildings and they were forced to park their vehicles on the roads or in the parking lots outside," he added. Deswal, making another observation, said the open spaces on surface-level that could be used as parking lots for visitors were being used for landscaping.

The District Town Planner (Enforcement) BK Saini admitted that majority of the developers were flouting the zoning plan norms related to parking lots in their premises.

He said: "It is very difficult to establish whether the building owner has leased out more than 25 per cent of the parking space to its occupants. So far we have not penalised any one because we received no complaint from the visitors about being denied parking inside the building."