Gandhi name included in Chandni Chowk multi-level parking lot; builder reinstalls new signages
The area on which the parking lot was built was earlier known Gandhi Maidan.
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After MCD hired a private company called Omaxe to build a car parking, the parking was named Omaxe Car Parking.Less than a week after the Delhi BJP expressed dissatisfaction over Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) decision to permit the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the recently constructed shopping mall and parking facility in Old Delhi, the builder appointed by the civic body has agreed to restore Gandhi’s name to the facility.
The area on which the parking lot was built was earlier known Gandhi Maidan.
Omaxe Heritage Private Limited, the private company which was appointed by the MCD to build the multi-level parking facility, has now been named ‘MCD Parking at Omaxe Chowk, Gandhi Maidan, Chandni Chowk’ and new signages have been reinstalled.
In a letter addressed to the MCD Leader of Opposition Raja Iqbal Singh, Omaxe Heritage Limited stated, “Very recently it has come to our notice that parking signage installed outside and near our project tends to affect our local community sentiments.”
Omaxe said that the multi-level car parking project at Gandhi Maidan is in a public-private partnership but it’s the “public which has always been at the forefront of our focus”.
“We have just been made aware of the local community’s emotional preferences with respect to the signages. Wiith the same understanding, we have reinstalled the signages,” Omaxe said.
The area on which the parking facility is built is a ground situated on the historically significant Chandni Chowk. After MCD hired the private company, the parking lot was named Omaxe Car Parking for which a signage had also been installed outside the parking lot that has been functional since December 1, 2022.
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor on Sunday urged the MCD Commissioner and Mayor to reinstate the name Gandhi Maidan on the Mall’s board, suggesting the title ‘Gandhi Maidan Omaxe MCD Car Parking’.
Originally part of the Queen’s Garden during the British era, Gandhi Maidan held public gatherings, melas, and various events. After Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Delhi Municipal Committee aptly named it Gandhi Maidan, marking its historical significance.… As the need for parking grew in Chandni Chowk around 1980, a car parking facility was established on this land, retaining the name Gandhi Maidan Car Parking.”
To solve parking woes in the walled city of Chandni Chowk and to support the pedestrianisation initiative, plans to start the parking project were initiated in 2017. A year later, the MCD announced that the parking project cannot be commissioned due to lack of funds. The multi-level car parking-cum-commercial project was, thereafter, shifted to the public-private-partnership model in 2018 and the tender was alloted to Omaxe Heritage Private Limited.
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