Parking at Tatanagar Railway Station goes free as tender process gets delay

Jamshedpur: Now people visiting at the Tatanagar Railway Station will have to park their vehicles at their own risk.

The Chakradharpur divisional railway authority have made the parking at the Tatanagar vehicle free from around Thursday midnight as the bidding for parking contract got delayed despite repeated attempts.

When contacted, Divisional Commercial Manager, Chakradharpur S Kole confirmed about making the parking at the Tatanagar free.

” Despite repeated attempts we have failed to finalise the tenders at Railway Station. We have fixed a notice at the vehicle stand to this effect, informing that the vehicle owners will not have to pay any fee for the parking,” said Kole.

The divisional commercial manager further informed that they had first tried to fix a three-year-parking tender by inviting bidders, but it could not be done as one of the successful bidders failed to provide the necessary bank guarantee required for the contract.

Kole said after the three-year parking contract failed to materialise, they had invited quotation tender. The quotation was too low to be passed.

At present, the parking area has a capacity to accommodate 500 cars, 300 autos and about 8,000 two-wheelers. The area, at any given time of the day, is chock-a-block with vehicles. At the Tatanagar parking over 4,000 two-wheelers and 1,000 four-wheelers used to be parked every day. But now with no parking contractor, parking the vehicle at the Tatanagar station will be at the owners� risk.

The Chakradharpur railway division has been trying to fix the three years railway parking tender since the past five years, but had been engaged a party for running the parking as the three-year tender system gets through. Two months back the railway had float a tender for the Tatanagar railway parking, leading a local party to submit the tender at the rate of Rs.10.5 crores.

Notably, the contract for the parking lot before was bagged by one Anil Kumar Singh of Baridih in November. The Chakradharpur railway division was hunting for a regular agency which can look after the affairs of the parking lot.

In the last four months, tenders were floated twice but not a single bidder responded. Last year, a similar situation had arisen when employees of the railway�s commercial department, who used to man the parking area, refused to do the job. They cited harassment by vandals and rogue auto-rickshaw drivers. At that time the railways issued a �Parking at your own risk� signage.