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-   -   Mumbai: Upto Rs. 10,000 fine for illegal parking (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/210379-mumbai-upto-rs-10-000-fine-illegal-parking.html)

According to a media report, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to penalize those violating 'No Parking' zones in the city and causing inconvenience to other motorists, pedestrians and emergency vehicles. The fines are said to range from Rs. 1,000-10,000. Vehicles of repeat offenders will be towed away. The new rule will be implemented from July 7, 2019.



The fines will be collected through e-challans and the fine amount will vary depending on the vehicle size and its location. The owners will be fined under Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act's sections 314 and 381 for encroachment and nuisance respectively.

The rule will be implemented wherever there is a pay-and-park facility available within 1 km and on arterial roads. BMC reportedly has 146 pay-and-park lots in various parts of the city where around 30,000 cars and 4,000 bikes can be parked.

The BMC has also asked ward officials to appoint contractors to implement the rule in their respective areas. The contractors must also have a former military person in their staff. At present, the BMC does not fine motorists for illegal parking. That is handled by the traffic police.

Source: Times of India

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I hope there are clear sign-boards informing the general public about availability of these pay-and-park areas. I've seen quite a many cases where the signboards are obscured behind a traffic light/ another signpost or written by a crayon on some random pillar (eg. No U-Turn) and then the traffic police is right there to fine you.

The aim should be to educate/ improve people and not collect fines. :)

Wow! While I'm all for fining any traffic infraction, including no parking, BUT, first we need to have the proper infrastructure in place. Otherwise this is unfair to public. I see a lot of places with a no-parking sign, but I hardly ever see any parking sign. Where are the parking lots, where are the multi-level parking in busy areas, where are the box markings on the streets? Government first needs to provide adequate legal parking spots before they go on penalising public so heavily. 10,000 rupees is a huge amount for most of us. :Shockked:

The worst is when you park your car on the roadside where there is no no-parking sign but still get your car towed or clamped. There is no way to fight this nonsense. Although, in my nearly 20 years of driving, I have only been towed once, in 2008, when I had carefully parked my car behind 2 big trees on the roadside in Vile Parle(E). Mind you there was no no-parking sign anywhere on this by-lane, and the car was not impeding traffic at all. Still they somehow managed to pull the car out from behind the tree and towed it away. This was my first and only time, and I ended up next couple of hours looking for my car, between various police stations. Next morning I discovered the front bumper of the car misaligned, and the radiator cracked and leaking. :Frustrati

Since then it is always stressful whenever I have to leave the car roadside, even without any signboard nearby.

How I wish there were properly marked parking boxes on the roadside, across the city, and a way to know if a spot is legal or not. Until then the stress continues.

An incident highlighting one such law which has created a hassle for a number of apartments in my locality.
My residential apartment has no fixed parking for cars just like a few other buildings in the locality and we usually park on the road. The building is in one of the bylanes of Khar adjoining S.V. Road and vehicular traffic is not too much; but two months back the RTO put up a board on both sides of the road stating Odd/Even Parking which has led to an inconvenience for the residents. The Khar traffic chowky is just a few metres away from the area and the cops are using this to make a quick buck by exploiting residents who are forced to park on either side of the road when they're unable to find a spot on the correct side.
In my opinion traffic police should involve Are Locality Management (ALM) bodies when taking such decisions.
It is very obvious that inflated fines will have a backlash from the citizens as well as citizen groups. The current fine of 1200₹ has become quite a good deterrent for people to not park illegally.

I am sure it is a step in the right direction to discipline erring motorists. Many of them are habitual offenders and cause eternal problems for the traffic, creating congestion and often being the causative factor for accidents. The illegally parked vehicle is not cared for, but due to such a parking when two other vehicles collide, the two try to figure out who is guilty ? Even the traffic police many a time ignore wrongly parked vehicles during such accidents. Besides a heavy fine, if at all an accident occurs due to such parking, the traffic police should deem it proper to book the the erring driver of the wrongly parked vehicle.

Coming to Mumbai, where space is at a premium due to the sheer number of motor vehicles and the countless number of people who as pedestrians use the roads, it is praiseworthy that the BMC has taken such a drastic step. It is hoped that other cities will also follow with similar steps.

And lastly, stretches reserved as parking zones need to be identified to discourage illegal parking. Many huge complexes have no parking slots for the occupants or visitors cars. A case in point is where an old structure on a huge plot is pulled down in a locality with narrow roads. Now a huge complex, that replaces the old structure may be comprised either of residential flats or a hospital or a shopping complex or and office and so on. The parking problem starts when no space or inadequate space is earmarked for parking by the builders in most such cases.

This seems as nutty as they come. I am all for hefty fines on folks that park on streets. But for that , you need parking lots within 300 metres of destinations, not 1 km away. India is too hot to expect people to walk 1 km each way after parking.

And frankly, most of the parking lots have been built in areas that suited builders, not in areas that need them.

I think this is a step in the right direction, however whether the step itself is a worthy one or not, that will be clear only as time progresses. Across any city, including Mumbai, there is a blatant misuse and mismanagement of parking by both drivers and traffic management (police, parking attendents, etc).

Clearly, Mumbai city cannot handle the current vehicle ownership numbers. If this even acts a minute % in deterring future ownership of vehicles, I'm all for it. And hopefully the parking space availability and management also improves as time goes by.

Folks fearing misuse of this rule by police should remember the positives of the strong policy against drink and drive by Mumbai police. Barring initial hiccups, I believe this should see a positive movement in the years ahead.

While I'm all for law and order, the situation is different here. A LOT of people don't have designated parking spaces for their cars and are forced to park out on the streets. What the government needs to understand is that, in a metro city with a major space crunch (like Mumbai), it is just not feasible to build a parking space for each and every resident of a building. If such space is built, it's at the cost of some other person's living space.

Take a building X for example. The builder builds another building Y, which is an MLCP, for residents of building X to park their vehicles in. While this might sound logical and the correct thing to do, it's not. In a city where people can't pay enough for a roof over their heads, that MLCP occupies vital space where another residential building could've come up and housed more people.

The correct way to go about this (IMO) is to remove footpath settlements, widen the roads, and allow cars to be parked on both the sides. If one day, all pedestrians decide to walk on the footpath, we'll be amazed at how much space will be freed up on our roads. The pavement dwellers can be housed in subsidized government-built colonies, and the cost incurred can be recovered over the next few years by collecting parking fees from the vehicles that park on the road.

That being said, the police needs to identify and correctly demarcate No Parking zones in the city to deter people from parking there. It's wrong to tow away/fine vehicles for parking at a supposedly "No-Parking" zone when there is no proper signage.

These are my thoughts, please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks :)

I believe this is a step in right direction. Hope authorities here in Bangalore also wake up and take some concrete action on illegal parking.

The entire mumbai parking fines is collected by one Nagpur based firm without following the due process of law. See article here. https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/...w/65535935.cms

This ridiculous increase in parking fines will only serve to benefit this unscrupulous contractor and his political bosses.

Such a sad situation where the loot is now organised and yet at least some educated people on automotive forums also seem to support this warped move.

Just be prepared to shell out more for greasing palms the next time you are caught with a vehicle parked/stationed in no parking zone. The problem is not existence of rules, but implementation of them at ground.

I wonder how valet parkings will play out in this context. Perhaps it will just mean higher cost of business for such establishments.

The best solution that I have come across is to have parking underneath the roads. i saw this at so many crowded markets in Spain.

This way, people do not need to walk long distances to the establishment they wish to visit, as then can park below the road close to where they need to go.

Perhaps the biggest benefit is that this solution does not require land acquisition to build a multi level car park - the government already owns the road and the space beneath it.

A brilliant idea, but implementation of the same in India, although not impossible, will literally take ages.

Another stupid rule to extort money from car owners. There is a MMRDA pay and park next to government hostel at Nariman Point but it's lock and key since 2 years. And cars are allowed to park illegally in front of it and so called parking attendants give you fake parking receipt or sometimes don't and charge money for looking after your car. I have complained to police but they are hand in glove with these attendants so don't do anything.

Have seen maximum traffic violations done by 2 wheelers including breaking signal consistently and going the wrong way but no action is taken by cops. Why not penalise them ?

While parking fines should be there to deter people from parking in no parking zones but it should be balanced and applicable to all cars and 2 wheelers .