REGULATORY · INDIA
Visakhapatnam municipal enforcement on illegal commercial use of mandatory parking areas
Change
Visakhapatnam’s GVMC, under “Operation LUNGS 3.0,” cleared 11 major encroachments in cellar and stilt-floor parking areas across multiple city zones on Wednesday and Thursday.
Why it matters
GVMC’s town planning wing, with police support, carried out raids and removals targeting businesses using required parking areas as godowns, shops, and storage. The action was executed across zones including Madhurawada, Gajuwaka, and Anakapalli, with specific clearances at sites such as Seethammadhara, Dondaparthy, NAD Junction, and a cellar area associated with HDFC Bank. The enforcement directly restores designated parking capacity in affected buildings and removes commercial floor area that had been operating in those spaces. For impacted operators and property managers, the immediate constraint is loss of access to cellar/stilt areas for commercial activity and storage, with potential knock-on effects on logistics and customer access. The stated rationale links the encroachments to vehicles being pushed onto streets and resulting traffic jams, indicating congestion mitigation as an enforcement driver.
Implications
- • Immediate loss of commercial/storage use in cleared cellar/stilt parking areas
- • Higher disruption risk for operators using mandatory parking as shops/godowns
- • Restored off-street parking capacity at targeted buildings may reduce street parking load
- • Increased enforcement exposure for similar parking-space encroachments citywide
Who is affected
- • Business owners using cellar/stilt parking areas as shops, godowns, or storage
- • Commercial property owners/managers responsible for mandatory parking compliance
- • Banks/tenants operating from buildings where cellar areas were used for storage
- • City traffic/police and municipal town-planning enforcement teams
Source
Topics
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