Dum Dum: The 10-minute window in which you could drop or pick up someone from the airport without paying a parking fee could be gone soon, but a VIP sticker on a vehicle will remain a free pass.

The civil aviation ministry is framing a parking policy for all state-run airports that aims to eliminate the scope for confusion and dispute by levying a minimum fee, just like malls do, the moment a car enters the airport premises. If the vehicle stays longer than the specified ceiling, the full fee will be applicable along with any extra charge depending on the total duration, officials said.

Only government and VIP transport, a nomenclature that is as misconstrued as it is misused, will be exempt from paying anything.

"We have received representations from directors of several airports about confusion arising from the duration of free parking, be it 10, 9 or 8 minutes. We are working on a plan so that vehicles have to pay a small amount as parking fee for entering an airport," Guruprasad Mohapatra, chairman of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), said from Delhi on Monday.

According to Mohapatra, vehicle owners possibly won't complain if the parking fee for the first one or two hours is a reasonable amount. "In many airports, parking contracts have been awarded to private agencies and we will have to take them into confidence, of course," he said.

Another AAI official said that the proposal to do away with free parking for a few minutes came up after complaints from several airports about regular disputes between personnel manning the fee booths and vehicle owners and drivers.

In Calcutta, arguments are often about vehicles overshooting the free 10 minutes because of congestion in the lanes leading to the booths. The parking fee for a second, minute or hour beyond the first 10 minutes is Rs 100. Beyond two hours, the charge is Rs 20 for every extra hour.

Congestion in the exit lanes used to be a regular problem when the only fee booths were those close to the terminal. This challenge appears to have eased since a row of new booths were opened nearer to VIP Road. Five such booths are currently in operation.

"Most of the time, the cause of trouble is when a vehicle owner or driver insists that he/she was at the airport for less than 10 minutes and the parking agency's clock shows otherwise," an airport official said.

SS Enterprises, the agency handling the parking management contract, records about 3,000 cars in the parking lot every day. Most of the rest enter and exit within 10 minutes.

"We pay a licence fee of Rs 1.5 crore a month, which works out to Rs 5 lakh a day. We aren't earning more than Rs 3 lakh on an average daily," said Bholanath Shukla, proprietor of SS Enterprises.

App-cabs aren't directly charged a parking fee because both Ola and Uber have entered into a rent agreement with the airport for pick-up points and parking space. Airport officials said it was unclear if that contract would also be revised once the new parking policy is implemented.

The only category of vehicles that won't be affected by the proposed change remains not only privileged but also the most indisciplined. A Metro report published on May 4 had highlighted how government and VIP vehicles are often parked in lanes of their choosing at the arrival level, causing inconvenience to those who would be penalised if they were to do likewise.