Palampur lacks parking spaces, tourists, locals a harassed lot

Ravinder Sood

Palampur, November 28

The town is facing an acute shortage of parking spaces due to an increase in the number of vehicles, causing inconvenience to people. In the absence of an adequate number of parking lots, tourists as well as locals are forced to park their vehicles at the space available and as a result invite traffic police action.

Stone laid in 2008, no work undertaken

• A multi-storey parking project, the foundation stone of which was laid by the then state government in 2008, has been hanging fire for the past 14 years
• Another parking lot near ICICI Bank is under construction for the past 10 years

At weekends, a large number of tourists visit Palampur, Baijnath and Gopalpur. Since there are no notified parking spaces in these places, residents, students, businessmen and tourists have no option but to park their vehicles along the roadside or in ‘no parking zones’, attracting fines from the local police.

Residents say that police personnel can be seen chasing vehicles and imposing fines on people without listening to their genuine grievances. Their allegations of harassment by traffic policemen has attracted widespread criticism.

Local residents say that there are more than 24 banks with no parking facilities in the town. Bank customers, especially senior citizens and pensioners, are often challaned by traffic policemen for parking their vehicles outside the banks.

A 70-year-old retired Army officer says that he was in the bank when the police challaned his car while his wife was sitting in it, despite her repeated requests. Another senior citizen says that he had gone to HDFC Bank when he was fined Rs 500 within a minute of parking his car. Traffic policemen did not listen to his ‘genuine problem’.

He said that the government should build new parking lots or residents should at least be given a few minutes to complete their transactions before their vehicles are challaned outside banks.

A tourist from Ludhiana alleged that the police stopped his vehicle on the national highway, near here, and though he had all documents, he was forced to pay Rs 1,500.

Palampur DSP Gurbachan Singh says that he has also received such complaints and will look into the matter. He adds that he is aware of the shortage of parking spaces and will issue specific instructions to the traffic police to be judicious in issuing challans and adopt a softer attitude towards people.