Gzb corporation board forms panel to decide modalities of smart parking project

The board of the Ghaziabad municipal corporation on Friday decided to take forward the smart parking project in Ghaziabad, even as the meeting saw heated exchanges between officials and councillors who alleged that the municipal officials had overlooked the by-laws of the parking policy, 2017, and the board’s rejection of the proposal in June.

Almost half the day was devoted to the matter of the parking project alone, said officials who attended the board meeting, adding that the board finally decided to form a committee, comprising municipal officials and councillors, to finalise the modalities of the project.

“There was a detailed discussion on the smart parking project. Finally, it was decided that a committee, comprising three councillors, will be formed to decide the locations, parking rates and other modalities of the project,” said Sanjeev Kumar Sinha, corporation’s chief tax assessment officer.

“There was a heated exchange of words with officials over the issue of bypassing the board’s earlier decision and forwarding the project to the state administration for approval. The officials want to hand over management of all the parking lots in the city to a single contractor. But the 2017 parking policy by-laws state that contractors have to be selected zone-wise (there are five zones in Ghaziabad). We also raised the issue that the contract time period is not specified in the by-laws,” said Rajendra Tyagi, councillor from Raj Nagar.

Currently, the corporation has 22 parking lots that are managed by different private contractors.

“Further, the rates of parking should be revised — the proposed rates are too high and the contractor should not be given absolute powers to tow away erring vehicles and harass people. We also questioned the intentions of officials who seem to be in a hurry to award the project,” Tyagi said.

Under the proposed smart parking project, all parking lots in the city will be managed by a single professional agency selected by the corporation. Users will be able to get details on nearby lots and availability via an app and all payments will be done online via hand-held machines.The online payment option was mooted to overcome the frequent complaints from users about parking operators overcharging them, municipal officials said.

“There are a lot of issues with the proposed project and we have told officials that we will move the court if the proper procedures and by-laws are not followed in awarding the contract. So in the end, the board decided to form a committee to decide on the issues raised by the councillors,” said Himanshu Mittal, councillor from Kavi Nagar.

Municipal commissioner Mahendra Singh Tanwar was not available for comment despite repeated attempts to reach him.

The councillors also raised the issue of unsigned house tax bills being served to residents and said the computation was ambiguous.

“The bills are being sent on the basis of a GIS survey taken up in February this year. We informed the board that the computation was faulty in many instances and needed to be corrected. Further, we also raised the issue of outsourcing the door-to-door collection of solid waste to a private agency. Because of that, a lot of equipment of the corporation are lying unused and many drivers are now sitting idle,” councillor Tyagi, said further.

Tax assessment officer Sinha said if residents feel that the house tax bills have issues, “they have the option to make a self-assessment of the property and submit a complaint to the corporation for redressal.”

The officials said other pending proposals will be taken up in the next board meeting.