The Delhi government has approved new one-time parking charges which are up to 1875% higher than the current charges
Car buyers in the National Capital Territory (NCT) will have to shell out extra money from January 1st. This comes after the Delhi Government approved the proposal of hiking the one-time parking charges of across all the price segments in India.
Vehicles, which are priced up to Rs. 4 lakh will have to pay Rs. 6,000. Priced between Rs. 4 lakhs and 8 lakhs, the charges have been now revised to Rs, 10,000. Vehicles priced between Rs. 8 to 12 lakhs would have to pay Rs. 15,000 while the vehicles priced between Rs. 12 and 20 lakhs will have to pay Rs. 30,000.
Vehicles priced between Rs. 20 lakhs and Rs. 40 lakhs will now have to Rs. 60,000 while all the vehicles priced above Rs. 40 lakhs would have to pay Rs. 75,000 as one-time parking charges. It should be noted that earlier the parking charges were uniform across the price ranges of the vehicles and were set at Rs. 4,000.
This comes after the one-time charge hike proposal was turned down in 2015. Delhi has three municipalities and all three of them submitted different price in 2015. Delhi government rejected the hike then saying that it would lead up to confusion. However, all the three municipalities have now come up with revised prices and the proposal has been passed.
The revenues from one-time parking charges go to the municipalities and the money is used to maintain the current parking spots and come up with new ones. Transport unions have opposed the fines and they have also threatened to go on strike if the charges are not dropped. From the 1st January, all the new vehicles would pay the revised charges in the NCT.
The Delhi government is also working to increase parking charges in popular areas like Connaught Place to reduce vehicle congestion. Earlier, they started charging residents of colonies who park the vehicles outside their home. Started as a pilot project, it is expected that more areas would soon come under the pay-for-parking-outside-home scheme.