Punjab Newsline | Chandigarh
Parking charges in Chandigarh will remain unchanged for the time being after the Municipal Corporation House rejected the proposal to revise parking rates during its meeting on Monday.
The proposal to introduce higher parking charges based on hourly rates under the Smart Parking system was rejected before any discussion could take place. Opposition councillors had demanded a detailed debate on the issue, but Mayor Saurabh Joshi dismissed the proposal without allowing a discussion.
The Congress accused the Mayor of attempting to increase parking fees. However, Mayor Joshi clarified that the proposal had been prepared by Municipal Corporation officials and not by the BJP. He said the BJP has never supported imposing additional financial burdens on the public.
Despite the proposal being rejected, the Municipal Commissioner still has the authority to record an objection and forward the matter to the Chandigarh Administration for further consideration.
The proposal was widely expected to fail as political parties were reluctant to support a parking fee hike ahead of the upcoming Municipal Corporation elections, fearing public backlash. While the BJP also distanced itself from the proposal, both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party openly opposed it.
This is the second time that a proposal related to increasing parking charges has failed. Last year, the Municipal Corporation had also rejected a proposal to convert 220 free parking sites into paid parking facilities after councillors across party lines opposed the move.
Had the proposal been approved, the Municipal Corporation planned to fix an annual reserve price of nearly ₹22 crore for operating and managing the city's paid parking system. The contract would have been awarded to the company submitting the highest bid.
Officials said that if bids had exceeded the reserve price, it would have generated the highest annual parking revenue in the Corporation's history. So far, the Municipal Corporation has never earned even ₹10 crore annually from parking contracts.
During the Question Hour, councilors raised the issue of drinking water quality in the city. Gurbaksh Rawat, the councilor from Sector 40, highlighted the supply of allegedly contaminated water in her ward and also brought up the death of a woman.
Gurbaksh Rawat stated that the water being supplied to her ward is contaminated. She claimed that this contamination caused a woman's health to deteriorate, leading to her hospitalization; the woman subsequently passed away. Expressing grief over the incident, the councilor demanded a serious investigation into the matter and a resolution to the problem.
