Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari speaking at an event in Delhi on June 16.
Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday declared — seemingly in jest — that he plans to "bring in a new law" by which Rs500 will be given as reward to anyone who clicks and shares pictures of wrongly parked vehicles.
"If Rs1,000 is the fine for a person guilty of the wrong parking, then Rs500 from that amount will go to the person who clicks the picture," he said, laughing along with the gathering at an event called Industrial Decarbonization Summit 2022 at a hotel in Delhi.
It was not immediately clear whether the minister's comment is indeed backed by a legislative framework or not.
He made the comment after laying out the context that wrong parking is "a huge menace" because the number of cars is going up in urban India. "There are sometimes cars for each member of a family. But no one is building parking spaces. In Delhi, for instance, wide roads are being treated as parking spaces," said Mr Gadkari.
He claimed that his house in Nagpur has parking space for 12 cars and he does not park on the road at all.
He shared a video of his address to the summit on his YouTube account.
He said public transport using electric vehicles is "essential" for India. "Even sanitation workers have cars in the US... Soon it seems India will also have that situation. Everyone is buying cars," he added.
Car sales in India have seen a spike recently after steep fall in numbers due to the Covid pandemic.
Passenger vehicle dispatches to dealers in India rose over two-fold in May 2022, compared to the low numbers in the Covid-hit May of 2021.
As per the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), passenger vehicle wholesales rose to 2.5 lakh units in May 2022 as compared to less than 1 lakh units in last year's May. These include cars and other vehicles barring two- and three-wheelers.
Overall sales of passenger vehicles, two-wheelers and three-wheelers rose to over 15 lakh units in May of this year as compared to less than 5 lakh in the same month last year.