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Banquet halls operating without adequate parking spaces in Udhampur

Young Bites. Dated: 3/7/2018 11:27:53 AM

SUMEET KARNAL SHARMA
Jammu, Mar 6
Traffic congestion and parking space have always remained a major challenge for the officials who joined their duties on different posts in the Udhampur District administration where most of the marriage and banquet halls have been permitted to operate without giving the guarantee of enough parking space which is adding to this problem.
Recently, to ease traffic congestion in Jammu, Inspector General (IG), Traffic Police, Basant Rath asked Deputy Commissioner of Jammu and Commissioner, Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) to cancel license to operate of banquet halls without adequate parking spaces.
However, Basant Rath is doing hard to pull State and Cities out of traffic mess, whereas a responsibility of the similar magnitude lies largely upon Udhampur Municipal Corporation (UMC) and Administration to tighten the grip around no of banquets halls--two-thirds of total registered in Udhampur district -who failed to have requisite parking lots, adding to the traffic woes of the central district of the state
Throwing all norms to the wind, these no of renowned halls are undertaking bookings for various functions during ongoing peak marriage season even as the concerned officials of the departments sit as a moot spectator and are yet to take any action in this connection.
“Particularly, yesterday the government multipurpose community hall which is now Sublette to some private persons known by the name of Riwayaat at M.H Road jammed the road for several hours caused many problems to the residents and MH going persons as the road is emergency road to the ambulance can be headed any point of time which can lead to any mishaps if this can't be resolved soon,” said Vikrant Singh, a local resident, “like Riwayaat there are many other places and banquets halls in the town which are leading to same problems to the locals and outsiders of the town .”
As per the sources inside the department, told that as many as banquet halls in the district are without parking facilities and a status report of the same is already being maintained but awaits official action.
Pertinently, most of the banquets are without parking facilities and using the roads in front of them for parking of vehicles during functions, which is one of the major reason of traffic chaos during marriage seasons in Udhampur said sources and also added that many times notices have been served to these banquet halls, but as majority of these belongs to the influential persons, they are continuing with their business without any hurdles.
However, hurdles do crop up in the traffic management for traffic police and concerned departments, which has been seeing a little improvement ever since new IGP Rath took over as traffic chief of the state, with the concerned now demanding that for some action from Administration in order to streamline the basic system of traffic and especially parking of vehicles.
In this regard, CEO Municipality, Santosh Kotwal said that we are working on it and I will look into the matter from tomorrow onward for the better and smooth functioning of the town strict actions will be taken against the violators he added. While speaking to Deputy Commissioner Udhampur Ravinder Kumar on the matter he said I too noticed this problem yesterday and I will surely take strict note of it and action were ever found necessary.