Telangana: Valet parking negligence earns challan

Hyderabad: Imran Jeddy, 38, an IT professional here, was surprised when he discovered a challan against his vehicle for parking on a service road. This, even as he had given his vehicle for valet parking at a famous restaurant at Road No-12 in Banjara Hills. The car was fined when he took his family for dinner on February 11. An annoyed Imran decided to share his grievance via Facebook about how he was fined for someone else’s mistake.

Wrong parking, limited parking space, and untrained valet parking staff, all these contribute to the mental agony of motorists who just go places to relax and have a good time, says a motorist who also faced similar situations. As many as 168 challans were issued by traffic cops till date for improper parking at restaurants and bars in 2017, which netted the cops Rs 16,800. Traffic cops also agree that many restaurants in the city have limited parking space due to which customers and valet parking guys end up parking on service roads and no-parking zones.

Senior traffic official say the vicinity of many restaurants sees improper parkings that block road’s traffic flow. “We will look into the complaint of challans being put on vehicles given for valet parking, and if the motorist feels it’s the restaurant’s mistake, then he can surely send us a request and we will look into the matter. Restaur-ants should concentrate on creating more parking facilities,” he proposed.

Imran Jeddy said, “I took my family for dinner to a restaurant in Banjara Hills. The valet staff at the restaurant accepted my car at 7:26pm. Since I have google timeline-enabled on my phone, I have a complete record of my whereabouts. At 8:25pm, we took the car back and returned home. I was surprised when I received a traffic challan for wrong parking. The challan included a picture of my car with a timestamp of 7:52pm. All I would like to see is that such situations do not arise in future for any motorist. I did not ask for an explanation or a refund but I have told the restaurant that they should not have parked my car in a wrong spot.’’