From Sunday, parking outside 26 public parking lots maintained by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will fall too heavily on your pocket. Mumbai Traffic Police will start levying heavy fines ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 23,000 for parking within a 500-meter radius of 26 authorized public parking lots.

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Praveen Pardeshi, Municipal Commissioner confirmed the same over a text message to DNA. The objective was to curb illegal parking outside designated parking lots, he had said.

Initially, the proposal was to leavy fines for parking illegally near all the 146 public parking lots maintained by BMC. The civic authority has also eased the periphery of the area from the earlier 1 km to 500 meters. This decision was taken considering that there are over 35 lakh vehicles in Mumbai that uses 1,900 sq km of road space, and too little space is available for parking.

According to sources, due to strong opposition from corporators across party lines and to avoid chaos due to insufficient parking slots; the 'No Parking Zones' has been limited to 500 meters. The Traffic Police department has been complaining to the BMC about the parking nuisance for long now. It not only obstructs the movement of other vehicles and pedestrians but also proves to be a hindrance to maintain roads and footpaths.

"Most parking lots have only 30-40 parking spaces. How can we penalise people if there is no parking space available in the lot? That's why we are targetting those who park close to public parking lots which have sufficient space available, but motorists refrain from using them," said a senior official from BMC.

Highlighting the scarcity of public parking lots in the city, assistant commissioner of A Ward, Nitin Aarte said, "Colaba-Churchgate area has many civic street parking lots, but not a single public parking lot. Thus, we will not declare any new 'No Parking Zone' as of now." Speaking to DNA, Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner of G north (comprising Shivaji Park, Dadar, Dharavi) ward said, "G North ward has two parking amenities — one near Plaza Cinema in Dadar and one near G North ward office, but no public parking lot." "We will take strict action on illegally parked vehicles. There are six public parking lots in the ward and we will put up 'No Parking Zone' board in these spots today," said Devendra Jain, assistant commissioner of G South Ward that has the maximum number of PPL.