Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 7: In what could be termed as sheer harassment, people are being regularly booked for ‘wrong parking’ offences by the Traffic Police without being provided proper parking places by the concerned authorities. However, this yardstick is rarely applied in respect of commercial vehicles particularly mini-buses, which are otherwise the major obstacle in smooth flow of the vehicular movement.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that senior functionaries of the Traffic Police Department have given targets of the challans to the field level officers and officials without assessing the ground situation particularly with regard to parking places.
In order to meet the targets, the cops in blue are regularly booking large number of people for ‘wrong parking’ offences despite being aware of the fact that there is no designated parking place in several parts of the Jammu. In the absence of any designated parking place, the people have no option but to park the vehicles on the road side.
“There is no parking place from Ambphalla Chowk up to Bantalab Chowk and in order to purchase anything the vehicle has to be parked on the road side”, a Professor of BEd College said, adding “but despite being aware of this fact the Traffic Police challans the people for wrong parking offence by pasting stickers on the vehicles”.
Similarly, there is no parking place from Jewel Chowk up to Talab Tillo Chowk or beyond that but people are being booked for wrong parking offences regularly, a doctor posted in Gandhi Nagar Hospital said, adding “it seems that there is mad rush among the cops in blue to meet the targets given by their superiors instead of analyzing the ground situation before going in for initiating harsh steps against the people”.
“However, there is no action in case of wrong parking by the commercial vehicle operators particularly mini-buses, which can be found stopped abruptly”, said a Professor of Government College for Women Parade, adding “such a soft corner is being adopted by the cops in blue towards mini-buses that private vehicles parked behind these commercial vehicles are challaned but not the commercial ones”.
“On one side the Traffic Police is virtually harassing the people by imposing wrong parking fine, on the other side Jammu Municipal Corporation and Jammu Development Authority have not yet woken from the deep slumber to fulfill their duty vis-à-vis creation of area-wise parking places”, sources said.
A senior officer of the Traffic Police said that a number of communications were sent to the JMC and JDA for establishment of area-wise parking places but there was no response from these agencies. He, however, said, “there may be exceptional cases of unjustified wrong parking challans but generally we take action in case of only those vehicles which create hindrances in smooth flow of traffic”.
He admitted that people are required to be provided parking places so that they have the option to avoid facing action from the cops in blue.
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