A kalyan mandap at Nima Sahi in Cuttack. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Oct. 30: The development authority here has identified over a 100 cases of kalyan mandaps being used to organise weddings and other social events in an unauthorised manner.

The anomalies were detected during a survey conducted on the status of private kalyan mandaps in the city. The Cuttack Development Authority (CDA) conducted the survey on a request from the Orissa High Court-constituted traffic management committee for Cuttack city headed by the police commissioner of Bhubaneswar-Cuttack.

“The committee is concerned over proliferation of private kalyan mandaps without parking places as they have led to an increase in traffic congestion at various parts of the city,” assistant commissioner of police (traffic), Cuttack, Krushna Chandra Samal told The Telegraph.

“Illegal parking of vehicles around these mandaps during social events has become a major problem,” he said.

Official sources said the report submitted by the CDA before the traffic management committee detected 102 unauthorised kalyan mandaps in the city. Of them, 13 were detected within the limits of Chauliaganj police station while 12 and 11 were detected within the limits of Madhupatna and Cantonment Road police stations respectively.

The CDA had referred all 102 cases to its legal wing to take action against the owners of these private kalyan mandaps, the report stated.

“The traffic management committee will take up the issue during its monthly meeting in November. It will also consider the option of issuing closure notices to these kalyan mandaps for violating safety and parking regulations,” said a member of the committee.

The committee had taken up the case of illegal parking around these kalyan mandaps after the deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Cuttack, Pravin Kumar, submitted a report expressing concern over the lack of parking facilities near most of these facilities and the traffic congestion resulted because of parking of vehicles on approach roads.

A sizeable number of these kalyan mandaps are also not safe for organising weddings and other social events as they run without the requisite permissions from the CDA, the fire services department and the Central Electricity Supply Utility, the DCP’s report said.