Around midnight on Monday, four cars in an apartment complex in Indira Nagar caught fire.
Even though the fire was put out, it was not before the cars were burnt completely, and the building lost power for the entire day.
According to the Adyar police, primary evidence did not throw up any signs of foul play, but there had been disputes between residents over parking spaces in the building.
N. Suresh, who lost two cars in the fire, said, “On many occasions, cars are parked in such a way that other residents are unable to take their cars out.”
With over six lakh privately owned cars and three crore two-wheelers on the road, parking, especially in residential areas, has become a huge problem.
While most times the police do not intervene by towing vehicles in residential areas, they are often called in to resolve problems. Unless there is some kind of system where the transport authority checks if a car has parking space at the time of issuing permits, there is very little that can be done, a senior police officer said.
G. Lalitha, who lives in an apartment complex in Adyar, said that with an exponential rise in the number of cars in her building, she was forced to park on the street despite having an assured parking lot.
Though the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority’s (CMDA) Development Control Rules specify that multi-storey apartment complexes provide parking spaces for visitors, many complexes don’t allow parking inside. “In many cases, builders display stilt parking spaces but eventually convert them to commercial spaces or godowns,” said a former planner.
Realtors who develop new properties say that there is often very little parking space available in residential buildings, especially in smaller ones with fewer than four floors.
According to realtor S. Senthil Kumar, although many potential buyers are turning down properties that do not have designated car parking slots, none of the local bodies have any specific requirements for vehicle parking units in smaller apartment complexes. In multi-storey buildings, however, the regulations have been relaxed to allow two or three levels of car parking, he said.
With not many localities having designated parking lots, vehicle owners tend to park anywhere they can, including beneath flyovers like those in T. Nagar, and in front of the airport. Vehicles parked in undesignated parking spaces are towed away, police sources said.
“At times the traffic police tow away our vehicles. So we keep a watch on police movement and move around,” said S. Sunil, a cab driver.
(With additional reporting by Deepa H. Ramakrishnan)