For Chawla, charity begins at home

A new storm is brewing in the municipal corporation over distribution of complementary parking stickers, as a proposal is afoot to give mayor Subhash Chawla 50 such stickers apart from his usual quota of five.

In the absence of guidelines and rules on the matter of distribution of complementary parking stickers, the mayor is set to pocket 50 more apart from his entitlement.

He is not the lone beneficiary of this windfall...the senior deputy mayor would get 20 additional stickers, apart from three he is entitled to.

The proposal on the matter is to be placed before the coming MC finance and contract committee meeting, which also entails earmarking of 20 complementary parking stickers for the MC commissioner as well.

As per the agreement inked with parking contractors across the city, councillors are entitled to five parking stickers each.

Interestingly, the issue of free parking stickers had rocked the House in May 2012 as well, after the then mayor Raj Bala Malik cornered as many as 406 passes under various categories. She was later forced to cancel all free parking passes/stickers.

BJP councillor Arun Sood, a member of F&CC, maintained that it was patently illegal on part of the mayor to corner more than four dozen passes.

"We will oppose tooth and nail the cornering of 50 parking passes by Chawla and proposal to give 20 stickers to MC commissioner. When the mayor is entitled to five passes, why does he need another 50? What will the commissioner do with 20 passes?" he questioned.

Sood further asked the criteria the mayor had followed to give himself 50 complimentary passes and only 10 for each prominent daily newspaper.

The mayor proposed to issue 10 free parking passes for each national dailies, in addition to three passes for TV channels and three for evening newspapers.

BJP-SAD councillor Malkiat Singh said, "The mayor has proposed parking stickers for officers also. We want to know what they will do with these when they have their own stickers on official vehicles? We will not let this happen."

City mayor Subhash Chawla said, "The agenda will be brought before the coming F&CC and we will decide accordingly."

Category Stickers Complimentary stickers

Mayor 5 50
Deputy /senior deputy mayor 3 20
Councillors 2 5
MC Commissioner 2 20
Additional/ Joint Commissioner 2 10
National daily newspapers 10 each
TV channels 3 each
Evening newspapers 3 each