Bengaluru citizens flag neighbour’s vehicles as ‘abandoned’ over parking feuds

Bengaluru residents appear to have taken advantage of the Greater Bengaluru Authority’s (GBA) abandoned vehicle clearance drive with some ulterior motives.

Of the 6,000 vehicles flagged on the ASTraM app for clearance, nearly 50% were found to be false complaints, many of which were allegedly filed amid feuds between neighbours over parking spaces on the road.

Greater Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda had announced the abandoned vehicle clearance drive as part of a citywide footpath clearance exercise being jointly undertaken with the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP). To encourage citizen participation, the BTP created a window on its ASTraM app through which residents could upload details and photographs of vehicles that had been abandoned for a long period, along with their location.

The response was overwhelming, with more than 6,000 vehicles flagged within two weeks of the announcement. However, when the BTP and Bengaluru corporations began verifying the complaints, they found that only around 3,000 were genuine, while the rest had been wrongly flagged.

In a city where many households own multiple vehicles amid a shortage of parking space, vehicles are often parked on roads for extended periods. Disputes over such parking spaces are also common. In several cases, residents angry with their neighbours over parking have uploaded photographs of vehicles that had remained parked in the same spot for a few days, alleging that they had been abandoned, according to BTP sources.

A senior traffic police officer said many families use two-wheelers to commute to work while leaving their cars parked outside their homes . “Such cars have also been flagged as abandoned,” he said.

“In some cases, people have flagged vehicles belonging to neighbours who had travelled to their hometowns after parking their vehicles on the streets,” the officer said. There have also been instances of garage owners parking customers’ vehicles on roads, which were subsequently flagged as abandoned by residents annoyed by the parking.

While no action has been taken against those who made such complaints, the police have urged citizens to flag only genuine cases, pointing out that verifying false complaints places an additional burden on personnel.

“It is a waste of time and manpower to verify such cases, which could otherwise be used to provide citizen services. Citizens should therefore refrain from making such complaints,” the officer said.

According to corporation sources, more than 1,000 vehicles have been cleared so far under the drive. These include vehicles whose owners contacted the corporation after notice stickers were pasted on them and subsequently removed the vehicles themselves after paying the prescribed fines.