Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) Wednesday issued an order asking different establishments such as commercial buildings, shopping malls multiplexes, hospitals, apartments and housing projects to stop charging parking fees from visitors on the premises immediately, saying this practice is “not legal”.
“It has come to the notice of BDA that different shopping malls, multiplexes and apartments are imposing parking fees. This is not consistent with the provisions of the BDA (Planning & Building Standards) regulations as well as the approved building plan and the developers/owners are hereby directed to stop the illegal practice of charging parking fees from the visitors, immediately,” the order said.
Besides, it has come to notice of BDA that the parking area shown in the approved building plan is being used for purposes other than parking vehicles on such buildings.
Such misuse of parking is resulting in on-street parking and thereby adversely affecting the traffic movement on the public road.
The BDA (P&BS) Regulations, 2018 prescribes that mandatory off-street parking shall be provided near commercial buildings.
The sub-regulation (7) of regulation 37 of the P&BS prescribes that misuse of parking spaces shall be summarily removed or demolished by BDA.
It is therefore directed to all property owners to abide by the mandatory off-street parking provisions in the approved building plan and any deviation from the parking provisions shall be restored by the owners as per the provisions of approved building plan within 30 days from the date of issue of
this notice.
Different establishments such as commercial buildings, shopping malls, multiplexes, hospitals, apartments/housing projects, etc. are required to provide mandatory off-street parking as per the provisions of BDA (P&BS) Regulations. Such parking areas are exempted while calculating the built-up area towards Floor Area Ratio (FAR).
BDA shall take strict action on such developers who are charging such illegal parking fees towards the parking spaces already exempted from calculation of FAR under the provisions of BDA (Planning & Building Standards) Regulations, 2018.
The above orders shall come into force with immediate effect.