Bhubaneswar, July 23: The civic body has identified 43 potential parking sites and decided to regulate the services in an attempt to streamline traffic in the state capital.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has chalked out plans to regulate these services through private contractors.

The major sites that have been identified include the on-street parking area in front of Exhibition Ground, outside Unit-I, Bapuji Nagar, two sites at Ashok Nagar, Rupali Square to IDBI on Janpath.

In the absence of proper parking practices, many of these stretches witness irregular parking, which ultimately contributes to traffic problems on these arterial roads in the state capital.

"Vehicles are parked in a wayward manner on the entire Janpath stretch. It is mainly caused by the absence of a proper mechanism. The situation is very bad near Ashok Nagar, Bapuji Nagar and Vani Vihar Square," said Satyam Mohana, a shopkeeper at Bapuji Nagar. A senior civic official said most of the identified sites were street-parking locations on Janpath and Rajpath and they had invited bidders to take care of them.

"The contracts with the earlier licence holders expired and we have come up with a fresh list of existing and new parking yards for auction," said the official.

He said the bidding process would be completed by the end of July and the contractors would take over their respective sites by August 1. Sources, however, said the earlier bidders found it difficult to manage the lots on Janpath since some "influential" people of the city lived on the stretch.

"In the earlier bidding, I took the stretch between Shriya Talkies Square and Club House on Janpath. I was hoping to garner good revenue since this part houses some major textile and other shopping establishments. However, my hopes were dashed since some people bullied me and refused to pay the fee," said Goutam Pati, a contractor, adding that he was forced to leave the stretch before the expiry of his licence period.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena told The Telegraph that they had received such complaints from parking operators in the past and promised to look into it this time in a sympathetic manner.

"We will monitor the parking practice with our enforcement squad. We will take and resolve the issues of parking operators as well as citizens," said Jena.

Bimal Mehta, a textile shop owner at Kharavela Nagar on Janpath, said irregular parking was a major issue. "There are marks for parking four-wheelers on Janpath, but few care about it. They park according to their whim, adding to the traffic problem. The situation is worse during the rains," said Mehta.