Vehicles parked outside a hotel in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 22: The civic body has asked several posh hotels here to comply with its parking norms and pay an annual fee for using government land for vehicle parking.

Civic officials said that several hotels, educational institutions, hospitals and other commercial establishments have been using adjoining roadside land to park vehicles of their employees and customers without paying any fees.

“We have asked them to pay an annual parking fee to the corporation to use the roadside land. We have also sought a reply from them in this regard within seven days. If they fail to reply, we will auction the roadside parking spaces,” said commissioner of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Sanjib Kumar Mishra.

In the first phase of regularising user fee collection from commercial establishments for using roadside parking slots, the corporation has written to 11 posh hotels — Mayfair and Swosti Premium at Jayadev Vihar, Hindustan International at Kharavela Nagar, Royal Midtown on Janpath, Crown and Presidency at Nayapalli, Suryansh at Chandrasekharpur, Grand Central at Old Station Square, Triumph Residency at Shahid Nagar, Sandy’s Tower at XIMB Square and Keshari at Master Canteen Square.

“We will also write to other hotels and business establishments to follow the same rule in a phase-wise manner,” said an official.

Srimant Mishra, BMC project officer of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission said that recently they had got instruction from the Union urban development ministry to increase sources of revenue generation to carry out various projects.

Mishra also said that a posh hotel near Ram Mandir had been paying the corporation Rs 3.46 lakh as parking fee for using government land for parking purpose.

However, the officials of these 11 hotels said that they were yet to receive any communication from the corporation regarding this matter. “We will think about it once we receive the letter,” said an official of one of the hotels.Last year, the corporation had collected Rs 50 lakh from parking. This year the civic body has set a target of Rs 1.5 crore.