The chit with an illegible scrawl under the windshield wiper that leaves car owners at the mercy of parking attendants is set to be replaced by an electronically generated time slip at municipal parking lots across town.

Come September, attendants in all 624 parking lots under the Calcutta Municipal Corporation will be required to wear identity cards and carry handheld electronic devices that can record the time a car came in and print a parking slip.

Mayor Sovan Chatterjee said the parking rates fixed by the CMC would be prominently displayed at all parking slots to ensure that car owners weren't fleeced.

"Our parking attendants will wear identity cards and carry machines that will generate a slip whenever a car enters a slot," Chatterjee said after a meeting with police, transport department, CESC and civic body officials at the CMC headquarters on Wednesday.

"The slip will mention the time the car was parked. When the vehicle vacates the slot, the owner or driver will be charged based on the duration of parking and the rate mentioned in the board. The board will display parking rates for different types of vehicles so that there is no confusion," the mayor added.

Barring malls and other public spaces where private agencies manage car parking, the practice of slipping a hastily scrawled slip under the wiper is often the cause of arguments between car owners and attendants. At many places, cars aren't allowed to be parked unless the owner or driver agrees to pay several times more than the legitimate parking fee.

"Electronic timekeeping lessens the scope for harassment but implementing the plan is a challenging task," said an engineer who drives only on weekends because finding parking space without paying a premium is like winning a lottery.

A police officer who attended the meeting at the CMC headquarters said the proposed system would be implemented in phases over a month.

The other decision taken at the meeting was that metered taxis would be allowed to park for free in the CMC-authorised parking slots from September.

"Taxis roam in search of passengers during non-peak hours and thus waste fuel and money. Drivers often park their taxis in no-parking zones and the police slap fines on them. Currently, if a taxi is parked in a parking zone, the driver needs to pay the parking fee that everyone else is charged," an official said.

Based on the proposal, each parking slot will reserve space for between two and six taxis. That means up to 1,000 taxis will find free parking space across the city.

"There will be between two and six taxis in any parking slot. Their number may be higher in busier locations like in front of a hospital," transport secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said. "If they have a parking slot, they can wait there for passengers instead of wasting fuel looking for people. This might even reduce their tendency to refuse passengers."

Taxi drivers often refuse to ferry people to the fringes of the city because they fear returning empty, adding to their losses. "Free parking will save them fuel and spare them fines. So they just might agree to go where they wouldn't earlier," a police officer said.

A section of officials said the move was a placatory gesture towards taxi operators, who have been demanding a level playing field with app-cab services like Uber and Ola.

No decision has been taken yet on whether to persist with or remove the taxi bays managed by the police at various locations, said Soumen Mitra, the special commissioner of police.