A private company engaged by the Traffic Police Department to tow wrongly parked vehicles in the two capital cities of the state has earned Rs 1.22 crore in the past four years even as the administration has failed to provide proper parking spaces.
According to the Home department, New Nishat Enterprises, which has a contract with the Traffic Police Department, earned Rs 1.22 crore from 2012 to August this year.
The Traffic Police Department generated a fine of Rs 5.18 crore in the past four years for wrong parking from the violators, out of which Rs 3.95 crore was deposited in the government treasury while the rest of the amount, Rs 1.22 crore, has been paid to the company which owns cranes used to lift the wrongly parked vehicles.
There are 2.61 lakh registered vehicles in Srinagar. However, the city has parking space for just 5,000 vehicles.
For each wrongly parked vehicle, the Traffic Police Department imposes a fine of Rs 600 out of which Rs 242 are paid to the company for towing a vehicle.
The state government has adopted a “multi-pronged strategy” to decongest roads and ensure better traffic management and towing of wrongly parked vehicles is a part of the strategy.
The summer capital, which has witnessed a spurt in number of vehicles over the years, has a fewer parking areas, with a holding capacity of 5,000 vehicles, according to official estimates.
The dearth of parking space in Srinagar has been acknowledged in the City Development Plan of the Town Planning Organisation, which noted that the “absence of organised car parking has resulted in parking along kerbs”, reducing the capacity of roads.
Srinagar has a poor road infrastructure and 76.22 per cent of its roads are either single or double laned.
In 2011, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation had drafted a parking policy for the city, which had envisioned a “paradigm shift” through additional road infrastructure and more emphasis on low-cost public transport system.
The policy had acknowledged that Srinagar city had no “organised and well delineated” parking spaces.
