WOES OF A SENIOR CITIZEN IN THE CITY

I retired as chief engineer, UP PWD in 1995 and am 81 years old now.

According to government orders, all pensioners are supposed to go to treasury every year for depositing their life certificate. Conventionally, pensioners have been visiting the treasury in November. There is a huge rush both at the main treasury and Jawahar Bhawan treasury. I, along with my friend (83 years), went to Jawahar Bhawan on November 15. Vehicles were parked from Doordarshan Bhawan to State Bank of India building as there is no parking space on Ashok Marg.

After completing the formalities in the treasury, we came out and to our shock my car was missing.

After about 10 minutes, a driver sitting in another car informed us that the police had lifted our car and took it to a place near Ranjan Service Station.

We reached the place where we found a booth on the road along with about a dozen cars parked on the road leading to Dr SP Mukherjee Hospital.

We got our car released by following the rules prevalent in such cases.

This has raised two questions in my mind:

▪ How far is it justified to lift a car from Ashok Marg under the circumstances mentioned above?

▪ If yes, how can police justify their action of parking such cars on a road that does not belong to them?

My own conclusion is that such an action is nothing but an act of harassment of pensioners. DD GUPTA chief engineer, PWD (retd) LUCKNOW