Chandigarh, June 22: Nearly three months after the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation (MC) House scrapped the much-delayed Smart Parking project, Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla is preparing to present a revised blueprint for approval on June 27. Ahead of the vote, Babla will convene an all-councillor meeting next week to gather feedback on the revamped plan.
“The parking committee, headed by Councillor Saurabh Joshi, has finalised the terms and conditions and included them in the new request for proposal (RFP),” said Babla. “But before we take it to the House, we want to incorporate suggestions from all councillors in the final draft.”
Officials said the reworked proposal includes several smart features: real-time vehicle-stay tracking, pink parking zones designated for women, internet-enabled systems for live monitoring, prepaid parking cards, and the option to pre-book slots. Software support is expected to be provided by the Society for Promotion of IT in Chandigarh (SPIC). Deliberations have also been held on GST inclusion, stamp duties, a new fee structure, data protection protocols, and a revenue-sharing model.
Importantly, the MC had already approved revised parking rates on April 27, which will take effect once the smart system is implemented. Under the new tariff plan:
- The first 15 minutes of parking will be free at all 89 MC-managed lots.
- For four-wheelers, rates will rise from ₹14 to ₹20 for up to four hours.
- Two-wheelers will be charged ₹10, up from ₹7.
- Premium commercial areas like Elante Mall, Fun Republic, and Piccadilly Square will see a ₹85 fee for the first four hours — the city’s highest parking rate.
Originally floated in August 2022, the Smart Parking project aimed to introduce FASTag-enabled access and a uniform digital system citywide. However, due to flawed tendering and unrealistic price combinations with GST, the House rejected the proposal in March 2024 and called for a complete overhaul.
In the new proposal, the MC has rounded off parking rates to simplify transactions, addressing concerns raised earlier about impractical fee structures.
Chandigarh currently has 89 paid parking lots covering approximately 5.22 lakh square metres, offering capacity for 16,030 equivalent car spaces (ECS). Since February 2023, the civic body has been directly managing 73 of these lots after private operators were implicated in a multi-crore scam. The remaining lots are running free-of-cost due to staffing shortages, contributing to frequent haphazard vehicle parking.
Despite the manpower crunch, the MC now earns about ₹1 crore monthly from its managed lots — a figure higher than the revenue collected during the period when private contractors were in charge.
While this isn’t the first all-councillor meeting under Babla’s leadership, past efforts have seen walkouts and boycotts from Opposition parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party and Congress. The 35-member House includes 16 BJP councillors, 13 from AAP, and six from Congress.
With strong political undercurrents and renewed interest in revamping city infrastructure, the upcoming discussions around the Smart Parking project will serve as a crucial test of consensus-building in Chandigarh’s civic governance.
