Rs 500 will be given as a reward to anyone who clicks and shares pictures of wrongly parked vehicles, Union Roads and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari today declared, even as reporters wondered whether this was a remark made in jest. Saying he plans to “bring in a new law”, the minister remarked, “If Rs 1,000 is the fine for a person guilty of the wrong parking, Rs 500 from that amount will go to the person who clicks the picture,” he said, laughing along with the gathering at an event called Industrial Decarbonization Summit 2022 at a hotel in Delhi.
Not clarifying whether the comment will lead to legislation, Gadkari made the comment after laying out the context that wrong parking is “a huge menace” because the number of cars is going up in urban India. “There are sometimes cars for each member of a family. But no one is building parking spaces. In Delhi, for instance, wide roads are being treated as parking spaces,” said Gadkari.
Considered one of the most zealous reformers in the Narendra Modi cabinet, Gadkari claimed that his house in Nagpur had parking space for 12 cars and he never parked on the road. He said public transport using electric vehicles is “essential” for India. “Even sanitation workers have cars in the US… Soon it seems India will also have that situation. Everyone is buying cars,” he added.
The union transport minister shared a video of his speech at the summit on his YouTube account.
Car sales in India have seen a spike recently after a steep fall in numbers due to the Covid pandemic. Passenger vehicle dispatches to dealers in India rose over two-fold in May 2022, compared to the low numbers in the Covid-hit May of 2021.
As per the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), passenger vehicle wholesales rose to 2.5 lakh units in May 2022 as compared to less than 1 lakh units in last year’s May. These include cars and other vehicles barring two- and three-wheelers.
Overall sales of passenger vehicles, two-wheelers and three-wheelers rose to over 15 lakh units in May of this year as compared to less than 5 lakh in the same month last year.
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