In a very surprising and consumer-friendly welcome move, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has made parking of 2-wheelers and 3-wheelers total free of cost at all shopping malls and multiplexes in the Tech city.
The reaction from these multiplex operators and Shopping Malls owners aren’t positive and unhappy. And now lots of social activists feels that this idea should be implemented all over the country. obviously it was predicted that business owners will be upset with this decision.
Pune City Makes Parking Free For All
The City Improvement Committee of the Pune Municipal Corporation has given a green signal to a unique resolution, which makes parking free, for all.
The resolution has ordered all multiplexes, and shopping malls in the city not to charge anything from the visitors.
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A formal notice or a so called legal circular has been dispatched to all 15 multiplexes, and 40 shopping malls in the city of Pune.
On weekdays, 2-wheelers were charging around Rs 10 to Rs 20, while 4-wheelers are charged Rs 20 to Rs 40 for the parking facility. On weekends, couple of malls and multiplexes also charged as high as Rs 100 for one hour in some instances.
It has been a great sigh of relief for Pune residents as from now on, parking would be absolutely free.
It is also reported that they are claims made by owners in order to oppose this new rule and also says that the parking charges are imposed on the customers due to some logical reasons. They fear that as parking would be free, there can be some misuse of their parking facilities.
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It is also expressed by them that the wages and salaries of the security guards, staff and employees of the parking lots are arranged via parking tickets only.
An unknown source who is mall-in-charge said, “This will give a free hand to disruptive elements to enter the the space undeterred.”
As per him, even Civic Bodies charge parking fees on the road, and there is nothing wrong if malls and multiplexes charge the same from the customers, in exchange of keeping the vehicles safe.
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Now, as there will be no parking fees, the management can shrug off any responsibility from up keeping the safety and security of the vehicle.
In reality there is no development control (DC) rules or development plan (DP) mentioned by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) regarding free parking.
However, in 2012, PMC made couple of rules to impose free parking at malls/multiplexes, but the proposal received stiff resistance from businesses, and it was withdrawn later on.
The malls used the fact that are no suitable provisions in the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning and DC rules of the corporation for free parking.
However now, PMC has used a ruling by Andhra Pradesh High Court regarding this matter, and have actually executed with the new rule of free parking.
PMC’s chief legal adviser, Ravindra Thorat said, “A directive of the Andhra Pradesh High Court had stated that the malls cannot charge fee from the visitors. We will use the directive to issue the notices.”
“Many visitors are left with no option but to pay the parking charges at the malls and multiplexes. It is the responsibility of these property owners to provide parking facility to visitors. So, we have reached out to them and told them to do away with the parking fee,” said Amol Balwadkar, the head of the City Improvement Committee.
He said many malls were charging hefty parking fee. It was an injustice to common citizens, he added.