Parking of vehicles in ‘no parking’ zones in Coimbatore is no guarantee that the violator can go scot-free. Henceforth, the vehicle owner, on his return, will find a lock on his vehicle’s wheel.
The city police are equipped with only two tow-away vehicles, and the Chief Minister has sanctioned procurement of two more heavy duty ones for the department.
On instructions from the Commissioner of Police, Coimbatore City, A.K. Viswanathan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Pravesh Kumar has already begun the exercise of identifying tow-away vehicles that would suit the requirements of the police. Towing away vehicles to the police station and awaiting the vehicle owner to pay the penalty was one way of cracking down on parking rule violations.
The other way of cracking down on such violations is to freeze the vehicle at the place where it is parked, said Pravesh Kumar and added that towing away vehicles and clamping of locks on them would continue to co-exist.
Talking to The Hindu, he said beginning Friday, the police have begun clamping locks on the wheels of the vehicles that have been parked in unauthorised places.
Efforts are on to procure more such cost effective and strong clamp locks and provide it to all the traffic police stations in the city.
Such locks are already available with the police and the force will be provided with more such locks for four-wheelers and two-wheelers.
The penal provisions resorted to by the police are two - invoking Section 127 (1) of the Tamil Nadu Motor Vehicle Act wherein the penalty would be Rs.100 and Section 179 where parking is seen as an obvious and wilful violation wherein the penalty would be Rs. 500.
The drive began on Cross Cut Road on Friday, and in future, all the areas that witnessed large-scale parking rule violations would be brought under the scanner, Mr.Pravesh Kumar said.
