Guwahati Municipal Corporation and its ways of earning extra cash
If you are a resident of Guwahati City, over the years you may have come across situation where you parked a vehicle on the side of the road and suddenly someone with a receipt book comes and asks you for parking fee.
It’s common sight, and it magically disappears in intermittently. A few months you will see them, then not, and then a few months later they are back.
Make no mistake — they are not contracted by GMC (Guwahati Municipal Corporation) to collect taxes on vehicle parking, it’s because GMC can not even collect taxes for the same.
GMC leases parking spots. There’s a difference between hiring contractors for collecting taxes, and leasing parking spots on public property. GMC legally can do the latter, but not the first.
It’s all a clever plan of GMC to find a loophole in the judgement against them in the case — United Motor Transport Association v. Gauhati Municipal Corporation, 1996 (2) GLR 473.]
The judgement is added as comment under the GMC Act 1971 document however it never states there that in this judgement they were told that they have no right to charge taxes on parking, and that the parking fees realized had to be refunded back to the petitioner in the first place. The judgement further clarifies that Section 144 of the GMC Act was used prior to the judgement to extend that to include parking of vehicles on the side of public roads.
An excerpt from the judgement is here — It clearly states GMC ‘s action were struck down as they used the bye-laws under Section 144 in favor of them to also charge taxes for vehicle parking, which is not right, and thus the Judgement instructs GMC to refund the parking feels that had been collected so far.
But look at the brilliant management of GMC, they cleverly come up with a loophole even for this. Now they don’t charge taxes for vehicle parking. They lease the parking spots designated by GMC to private entities for a fixed amount under a tender.
Once they do that now it’s up to the private entities. Yes, GMC does publish a Rate list for the parking, but they never claim to charge it to the public themselves. Instead they lease the parking spots, then earns money indirectly from the private entities in the name of tenders.
Interestingly, in the past, for e.g in 2021, GMC notified the public that all designated parking spots were made FREE FOR PUBLIC — Why was that? Because almost all lessees were defaulting on their payments to GMC. So they just decided to make the parking free unless the tenders were given to new entities. That’s not just one time, it has happened multiple times in the past, and that why is this whole vehicle parking fee scenario goes on and off.
GMC has been not in the very interest of the general public, it is evident by the many places throughout city which has been taken over by private entities because GMC allows it. For example, whole section of a road near Dighalipukri has been infested by street food hawkers, where a two-way road had to be turned into a one way road. Yet, GMC has done nothing to rectify that, instead they are busy collecting fees from them so they are allowed to continue literring the public road that WE THE PEOPLE pay for with our own hard-earned money.
This corruption needs to end. Please share this on all official channels of Assam Government, Kamrup Metro and CM.
What if the citizen don’t pay? Will legal action be taken on the citizen?
No. There’s no bye-law in the GMC Act 1971 that can lead to legal action on you or against your vehicle registration for refusing to pay these parking fees.
Note that these parking slots are leased to private enterprises / entities, these private entities have no legal agreement with any citizen for extracting any amount for parking on a public parking place, no matter if GMC allowed them or not.
I suggest you to look at the terms and conditions of one of their recent tenders inviting bidders —
The terms & condition does not mandate anything related to the extraction of parking fees. For e.g if you travel in a train without a ticket, there are actual laws passed by the legislation that can land you in legal trouble, but with this, there is basically no legal aspect of taking parking fees from the citizen. Instead the terms & conditions sets forth that if any lessee or their staff misbehaves or conduct badly with a vehicle owner their lease agreement can be terminated. Only fear people have refusing these parking fees is that of the people who are on site extracting it, in many instances if a citizen refuses they will resort to arguments, and sometimes even hostility, which first of all is a crime itself, second of all, can lead to the leased parking spots termination by GMC itself, and if GMC fails to do that, we have all the right to question GMC on that.
Don’t pay. Don’t entertain these, and these practices shall end itself.
Thanks! Peace out.
