Autos at railway stations will now toe the line

Autorickshaws line up outside Vikhroli station. Pic/Sameer Markande

After suspending towing of cars from no-parking zones for a week, Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey has decided to continue the policy for longer. Along with that, he also has plans to make railway stations congestion-free by removing vendors and making sure autos line up. Pandey took to social media to inform Mumbaikars of the new initiatives and decisions for the city.

Since coming into his new post, Sanjay Pandey has been interacting with citizens on social media. On March 5, he announced that no vehicles would be towed in the city for a week as an experiment. The vehicles will be clamped and e-challans will be issued to the owner of the vehicle.

No traffic wardens

Many motorists had reached out to the CP urging to make provisions to guide motorists to parking zones to avoid action. After considering the feedback from the citizens, the CP has decided to continue the suspension of towing. Speaking about the issue, he said, "We suspended towing, and based on ground reports we plan to keep it suspended till we and the BMC can demarcate parking areas and no-parking clearly. In the meantime, please do follow traffic rules"

The next task the CP has taken on is to decongest railway station areas in city and the suburbs from autos and vendors. The chaos outside railway stations often leads to heavy crowds and altercations.

To assist traffic cops in maintaining vehicular movement in the city, traffic wardens were introduced. The wardens were trained by the traffic police while paid by various real estate players, companies and NGOs. With complaints of corruption and bad behaviour reaching the top brass, the CP has decided to remove them permanently.

Speaking about the new and stringent provision of booking riders taking wrong sides, the CP said, "We took up ‘wrong side driving' and ‘remove khatara' as our daily work. We changed the strategy from fining to making out regular IPC cases. So far, 425 bikers were booked". The drive to remove unclaimed vehicles parked besides roads blocking traffic; 856 khataras have been removed.

Passport verification

Now, citizens will no longer be required to go to police stations for passport verification except in exceptional cases of documents being incomplete. "The constable who comes to your house does all the work. He is competent," said Pandey.