Cars with diplomatic number plates routinely park in no-parking zones in central Delhi — including around popular markets like Khan Market.

A Russian correspondent gasped on hearing about the decision to end this immunity for US mission cars in New Delhi. “You know how difficult it is to find legal parking in central Delhi or places like Khan Market,” the diplomat said. “They may as well bar the Americans from these spots — they would need to wait in long queues for normal parking if they want to go to a restaurant or bar in these markets, and that’s something diplomats are just not used to.”

But American diplomats may have little choice but to wait in these queues for a meal or drink because India has also decided that it will no longer look away from commercial activities carried out at the embassy club without a permit. The restaurant, bar and other facilities at the club were originally meant only for members — essentially, the family of American diplomats serving here.

But the club’s popularity attracted diplomats from other missions and non-diplomats who were slowly allowed to attend as guests — and had to pay in US dollars for food and services.

That, Indian officials said, violates India’s tax laws because the club does not have a licence to sell food or drink commercially. The tax exemptions accorded to establishments like the club that are attached to diplomatic missions under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations extend only for services provided to diplomats of that mission and their families, officials said.

The steps taken today follow a series of moves that India insists are reciprocal but are timed in a manner that make them appear more like retribution against Khobragade’s arrest on December 12.

On December 17, India sent bulldozers to the US embassy to lift away barricades placed outside the mission 12 years back after the September 11, 2011 attacks. The barricades had blocked Nyaya Marg, a road that also houses the French and Swedish embassies, from vehicular traffic for over a decade.

India also withdrew special privileges it had allowed to US officers at its consulates in Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Chennai, including immunity on a par with that enjoyed by diplomats at the US embassy here.

New Delhi withdrew the waiver on import duties that it had indefinitely extended to all American diplomats in India. It has also asked the American Center here to stop screening films or get a licence to broadcast movies.

“If India’s idea is to tell American diplomats to get the hell out of here,” an American diplomat told this correspondent today, “it’s doing a pretty good job of it.”