The Hindu 19.04.2013
Municipal corporation leaders meet L-G over parking fee hike
Leaders of all the three municipal corporations of Delhi
told Lieutenant-Governor Tejendra Khanna on Thursday that they would
not allow increase in parking fee.
The
Lieutenant-Governor had recently approved of new parking rates that had
been proposed by a special task force appointed by the Delhi High Court.
Informing
the media about what transpired at the meeting, North Delhi Municipal
Corporation Standing Committee chairman Ram Kishan Singhal said: “We
made it clear that there would be no hike in parking rates. This is our
party’s decision and we will completely go by it. I don’t believe that
raising the parking fee would in any way discourage people from buying
more cars and switch over to public transport. There are 70 lakh
registered vehicles in Delhi. We can’t just ban them,” Mr. Singhal said.
“Instead,
increasing the tax on purchase of every new vehicle was a much better
idea, which I have been proposing for a long time. Then we can also put a
tax on thousands of cars coming to Delhi on a daily basis,” he added.
On
the response of the Lieutenant-Governor to the refusal to raise the
parking fee, Mr. Singhal said: “He is not fully convinced yet, but I am
confident that we will finally convince him and make him see our
perspective.”
During their interaction with the
Lieutenant-Governor, who is also Chairman of the Delhi Development
Authority, the corporation leaders opposed the decision of the Delhi
Government to include farmhouses under the jurisdiction of the DDA
developmental area and asked him to regularise these farmhouses under
the jurisdiction of the respective corporation.
Mr.
Singhal said the corporation leaders suggested to the
Lieutenant-Governor that they can take control of the issue of cleaning
if provided with a budget. “The issue of drains alongside
roads maintained by the Public Works Department was also raised during
our meeting and we told the Lieutenant-Governor that these drains have
not been maintained and cleaned and this will create a huge problem
during the monsoon,” he said, adding that without the budget for their
cleaning they would not be able to maintain them.
