Bombay HC says orders on parking go unheard

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has, on various occasions, through orders and directions while hearing public interest litigations, asked the BMC to bring out a comprehensive policy on city’s parking woes. In fact, the chief justice had also warned that if such a policy was not introduced, in a span of five years, there would be no space in the city as the roads are lined with vehicles on both sides and hawkers have taken up footpaths.

According to the petition filed by Janhit Manch, an NGO, the city residents were being inconvenienced due to haphazard parking which is the result of an increase in the number of vehicles. Coupled with this, the absence of proper regulations to control traffic was causing nuisance to the public at large and hence directions were needed for the authorities to frame a comprehensive parking policy.

Following the high court directions in January 2017, the state and the BMC had come out with various policies of which the pay and park policy in ward A was implemented on a pilot basis. The other policies proposed by the state and the BMC was getting builders and developers to provide parking spaces free of cost in new constructions in exchange for additional FSI. While 61 projects that would provide 46,366 parking spaces were sanctioned, only 13 projects with 6,872 parking spaces are completed. Out of this, only six lots with a parking capacity of 3,081 have been handed over to the BMC.

In light of the increasing vehicular density and lack of parking spaces, the bench of chief justice Dr Manjula Chellur referring to Malabar Hill had observed “At night, on both the sides of the road, cars are parked like a necklace making the roads narrower. In Bombay, after five years you won’t have space to go anywhere. This is a very serious issue.”

 “Even the footpaths are taken over by hawkers,” she added.

The petition is slated for hearing later this month.