PUNE: The civic body's 26 public parking spaces have virtually turned into dumping yards with over 300 vehicles, including four- and two-wheelers, left unattended, prompting the authorities to mull auctioning them if the owners do not claim them.
Shriniwas Bonala, the traffic planner of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), said, "Inquiry of all the vehicles parked for more than 48 hours would be done by PMC. The owners would be contacted. If they don't give valid reasons for parking the vehicles or do not come forward to claim them, they would be scrapped."
He said this initiative would be undertaken to vacate the parking spaces and make them available to the needy.
According to PMC officials, some dumped vehicles were stolen earlier and sold off at cheaper rates. "The migrants left these vehicles behind while going back to their hometowns. So, neither the original owners nor the migrants claim them," one of them said.
Madhav Jagtap, the head of PMC's anti-encroachment department, said, "PMC issues public notices urging the vehicles' owners to take them. If no one claims the vehicles, the civic body explores the option of auction to scrap them. The tendering process for the same is carried out."
Regional Transport Office (RTO) has claimed that they had a very limited role in disposing of the abandoned vehicles. It is primarily the job of the municipal corporation and the traffic police department. Whenever the police or the corporation officials spot such vehicles, they take down the registration numbers and/or chassis numbers and send them to RTO.
"We find out the contacts (name, contact number, address) of the owners of the abandoned vehicles and send them to either the civic body or the police. They then contact the owners. The vehicles are auctioned if their owners are unwilling to take them back," said an official of RTO, Pune.
In case of auctions, RTO provides an officer to conduct the valuation of the vehicles, after which they are sold to scrap dealers. "In many cases, vehicles are found to be hypothecated to banks or financial companies because of non-payment of EMIs. In such cases, we provide the contact of the finance institutions concerned to the municipal corporation or the police. They, in turn, contact the finance companies to check if the latter would tow away the vehicles. If not, a part of the vehicles' selling price as scrap goes to the finance companies. RTO can also contact the vehicles' owners, but we don't do it generally because of manpower constraints," the RTO official said.
(With inputs from
Joy Sengupta)
