Tourists suffer as McLeodganj bus stand, car parking shut

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, May 28

Following a tiff between the contractor and the management of the Himachal Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (HRTC), the McLeodganj bus stand and a car parking facility built on the build-operate-transfer  basis by the Himachal Pradesh Bus Stand and Management Authority has been closed.

Sources said the HRTC had recently issued an order that the contractor who had built the bus stand was not entitled to collect parking fee as the construction of both facilities had not been done as per the approved maps. The contractor shut the parking facility after the orders. However, he was not even allowing HRTC buses to be parked at the bus stand, said the sources.

Regional Manager, HRTC, Dharamsala, Pankaj Chadha said the higher authorities had barred the contractor from collecting parking fee.

The closure of the vital parking facility in the peak tourist season has created traffic chaos in McLeodganj. Since just one per cent hotels in the area have their own parking facility, tourists are dependent on the HRTC bus stand for car and bus parking. For cars, a small parking facility has been constructed by the Dharamsala Municipal Corporation.  Members of the hotel association of upper Dharamsala have urged the district administration to resolve the tiff at the earliest.

Sanjeev Gandhi, general secretary of the association, said there had been a sharp decline in the arrival of tourists in the region in the last few years due to various reasons. If this issue was not resolved, the tourism industry would suffer huge losses this year too.

The sources said the bus stand built on the BoT basis had already been marred in controversy.  The contractor, who was allotted land by the HRTC to construct the bus stand and car parking facility and run it for 40 years, also constructed a hotel and a shopping complex  on the reserve forestland at the entrance of McLeodganj during the Congress regime from 2003-07. 

The NGT, in its orders issued in 2016, had declared both hotel and shopping  complex  illegal.