The Salem Division of the Southern Railway put an end to the fleecing by the contractor at the parking lot on the Goods Shed Road side of the Coimbatore Railway Junction, by evicting him as soon as the court stay that he had obtained expired Friday midnight.
The contractor’s efforts to get the stay extended through an appeal before a higher court failed, and the railway authorities took over the parking lot and evicted him under police protection. The railways’ staff will run the parking lot and collect the prescribed fee, till a new contractor is finalised.
The evicted contractor had taken up the parking space operation at Rs.86 lakh, and what followed was a spate of complaints of fleecing.
While he should have collected only Rs.10 as the minimum fare for parking two-wheelers, he had collected Rs.20 as the minimum fare even if a two-wheeler had been parked only for one hour. He had suppressed from the public the availability of a parking token for Rs.10. Instead, he had issued only tokens for Rs.20.
A couple of days ago, a video clip of the malpractice and an argument between a vehicle owner and the employees of the contractor went viral on the social media. When this was brought to the notice of the Salem Railway Division officials, they admitted that there was a steady stream of complaints of fleecing at this parking lot.
The contract was to expire on September 19, but the contractor obtained a stay from a city court and continued to operate at the lot.
The railways moved the court with appeals to vacate the stay. Waiting for the opportune moment, they evicted the contractor as soon as the city court’s stay itself expired, and no relief could be obtained by him from a higher court.
