The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will e-auction contracts to operate parking lots across the city, marking a significant shift toward transparency and increased revenue generation.
On Wednesday, the civic body’s mayoral council approved a proposal to put fourteen road stretches with space for 482 cars up for e-auction. This represents the first time KMC has opted for e-auctions over traditional tenders for parking management contracts.
The decision follows repeated failures in allocating parking contracts. The tendering process has long been plagued by irregularities, with agencies refusing to adopt electronic payment systems and instances of outright sabotage.
In 2012, a tender box was broken open to disrupt the bidding process at the KMC headquarters.
In January 2023, the KMC had floated fresh tenders for car parking across the city, the first time in nine years. Multiple tenders were floated, each for a cluster of roads. By March 2023, all parking tenders had to be cancelled after the process violated state government rules requiring electronic submission for
contracts worth ₹1 lakh or more. KMC had opted for the manual mode of submission of tenders.
“There is hardly any scope to manipulate or disrupt the e-auction,” said a KMC official, highlighting the system’s built-in safeguards.
How e-auctions work
The new system offers several advantages over traditional tenders. While tenders require at least three participants to proceed, e-auctions can move forward with just one bidder. The process will run through a government portal where bidders can see quoted prices but not competitor identities.
KMC will set base prices for each lot, and bids must meet this minimum threshold, or the auction will be cancelled. The transparent process could attract professionally-run parking agencies from other cities, potentially revolutionising fee collection.
Current problems
The existing parking management suffers from widespread irregularities. Attendants typically demand cash payments without providing proper receipts, charging between
₹20 and ₹100 per hour despite the official rate being just ₹10 per hour. At premium locations like Park Street and Burrabazar, fees can reach ₹100 hourly, with weekend rates even higher.
An April 2023 initiative to introduce electronic payments through point of sale (POS) machines initially showed promise but gradually failed. The KMC had then promised that all car drivers or owners would be provided machine-generated receipts mentioning the time when the vehicle entered the parking bay, when it left and how much one needs to pay. Some parking attendants initially used the machines, or at least kept them. The machines have now largely disappeared, with attendants reverting to cash-only transactions and handwritten chits.
The e-auction will include prime locations such as stretches of Chowringhee (JL Nehru) Road, Garcha Road, Ramani Chatterjee Road, Hindustan Park, Dover Lane, and EM Bypass service roads. The parking space under the Gariahat flyover is also included.
KMC officials draw confidence from their recent successful e-auction of a 16-cottah land parcel at Matheswartala near Science City, which fetched ₹12.70 crore despite being a narrow strip with varying widths of 8-20 feet.
“The e-auction could bring professionally-run agencies managing car parking in other cities into the race, eventually making the fee payment process transparent and documented,” the official added.