CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has asked the police and Chennai Corporation to file a report on the action taken to remove unauthorised installation of ‘no Parking’ boards and restricting the use of public spaces by placing flower pots or barricades by residential associations and individual bungalow owners.
A direction, in this regard, was recently issued by the first bench of acting Chief Justice D Krishnakumar and Justice PB Balaji when a public interest litigation petition filed by CS Nandhakumar of Dharmapuri came up for hearing. The bench adjourned the hearing by two weeks.
Stating that a large number of families own a car irrespective of the availability of parking space and many own more than one car, the petitioner mentioned that additional cars are parked on the streets. He added that the police, as custodian of the roads, have got a greater responsibility to prevent illegal parking.
The petitioner noted that public space is abused and misused due to influence of select neighbourhood associations, apartments, bungalows and VVIPs. They are misusing the public space by putting up no parking boards or by placing barricades, thereby not allowing the public to park their vehicles on these streets or roads even for a short duration.
This problem is more prevalent in localities like Adyar, T Nagar, Mylapore, Mandaveli, Mambalam and Ashok Nagar, the petitioner said.
He alleged that such unauthorised blocking of public space is done with the connivance of the police and civic body officials. He sought the court to issue directions to the authorities to free the public space of all such unauthorised boards and barricades in a time bound manner.