BENGALURU: You may soon find some of the city’s roads easier to drive along. The traffic police are in the process of identifying abandoned vehicles across the city with help from locals, political leaders and their own personnel. Once identified, they plan to contact the vehicle owners with the help of registration numbers, and ask them to remove the vehicle. If owners are not traced, the vehicles will be towed away to some empty spaces close to the jurisdictional police station.
If owners are contacted they will be asked to pay the towing charges and get their vehicles released. Or else, the police will start the process of auctioning or scrapping such vehicles after taking court permission.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) P Harishekaran said he had noticed many vehicles abandoned during his rounds and also got some complaints from people about abandoned vehicles.
He recently instructed his officers to conduct a special drive on the abandoned vehicles. Police are planning to start the special drive from Monday. Till then, they will create awareness about the drive by posting messages on Facebook and Twitter. The traffic police are also making announcements in the respective jurisdictions.
Harishekaran said, “We have started towing abandoned vehicles and, in the last two months, 56 vehicles have been towed away. We will now be starting a special drive. I have given instructions to identify vehicle owners, find out why they have parked it on the roads and give them time to remove the vehicle. As per my knowledge, there are at least 1,000 vehicles abandoned for many months.”
He pointed out that after the vehicles are taken to the government allotted land, the owner will have to pay a heavy price for towing and also parking charges per day. “If the vehicle is unused for a long time, if the fitness certificate is lapsed, the owners can either sell it or give it to scrap. But they can’t use the road as a parking place their vehicles. Movement of traffic is affected by abandoned vehicles,” he said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic-West) Dr Soumyalatha S K said, “We have started identifying abandoned vehicles. Most of these vehicles are parked on the roadside by some people who go out of the city to work or for other reasons. We will trace such people and instruct them to tell their friends or family to take the vehicle.”
However, police have a problem with finding space to keep these abandoned vehicles. So the jurisdictional police are identifying empty places and, in coordination with the BBMP corporator and constituency MLA, they will use such places for keeping the towed-away vehicles.
A traffic police official at Rajajinagar said, “We have already started tracking abandoned vehicles with the help of our staff, public and local leaders. We have asked the people to click photos of abandoned vehicles and send it to us along with the location. We are also creating awareness among the residents to take their vehicles if they have abandoned it on the roads. After Monday, if the vehicles are still left on the main roads, service roads and other places, we will start towing them away.”