AAP Government Makes It Difficult For Aam Aadmi To Buy A Car: One-Time Parking Fee For New Vehicles Hiked 18 Times

A new car purchase in the national capital is set to become substantially dearer for consumers, as the Delhi government announced a move to hike the mandatory one-time parking fee by up to 18 times from 1 January, reports Hindustan Times. The current fees ranges from Rs 2,000 to Rs 4,000, which will go up to a range of Rs 6,000 to Rs 75,000.

The fees will be determined by the price category the vehicle falls in, which will now have six slabs, up from the previous categorisation into just two slabs.

Rs 6,000 will be charged from customers buying a car up to worth Rs 4 lakhs, while between Rs 4 and 8 lakhs, one will have to shell out Rs 10,000. The segment of cars above Rs 40 lakhs will be in the highest slab, with the one-time charge set at Rs 75,000.

The order will also affect commercial vehicles, whose fees will skyrocket to Rs 10,000 -Rs 25,000, up from the current range of Rs 2,500 - Rs 4,000. Bus and Taxi operators have expressed their ire against the new move by threatening to launch a protest.

They’ve demanded an immediate rollback of the decision, with the spokesperson of State Transport Authority Operators Ekta Manch, Shyam Lal Gola stating, “All transporters have been paying the one-time parking fee for 22 years. Where has all the money collected so far gone? Not a single parking space has been built for us.”

The three municipal corporations of Delhi which had initiated the proposal have justified the decision as necessary to create parking infrastructure in the national capital.