On-Road Parking Menace Under Kohima Municipality

It is unfathomable how some residents of Kohima urban dwellers decide to buy a car or in some cases multiple cars without having any certainty on where they would be parked during the day or night time.

For example there are cars that park for 24 hours or even for days at a stretch along ‘Traders Road’ (DC office road to Razhü point) without paying a penny as parking fee. 90% of the parking space is occupied by residents of Daklane, D’Block and possibly Naga Bazaar and New Market too both during the day and night.

Past 7:00pm it is almost impossible to find a parking space along this stretch of road also referred to as “main town” because colony residents occupy every available space for the night.

This problem is also endemic to almost all the 19 wards of Kohima. For 70% of the city dwellers could be parking their vehicles along the bylanes if not on the main arterial roads. That too as close to their residence as possible and as near to private CCTV installations as possible.

It is long over due for the government to make a law (as is said to be followed in Mizoram and elsewhere) where a person living in urban centres of Nagaland can be sold a car by the dealers only when they produce a proof of parking document (not on any roadside) from the administration and colony/panchayat authorities.

(Nagaland might be a lone state where the general public undergoes hardships for the conveniences of individuals)

Peter Rutsa

Kohima.