The Calcutta High Court administration is looking for space to park vehicles used by lawyers and court officials.
Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Friday said the registrar general of the high court had asked the army to allot a parking space adjacent to Babughat for vehicles used by advocates and officials.
The Chief Justice was listening to a petition related to the environment during the day.
Over 2,000 vehicles arrive daily in the high court, senior police officers said. The court is hemmed by Strand Road in the west, Esplanade Row West in the south, Old Post Office Street in the east and Kiran Shankar Roy Road in the north.
The vehicle count has spiralled so much over the years that space for a lone vehicle to pass remains on stretches of Esplanade Road West — behind the Assembly house — and Old Post Office Street, police officers overseeing traffic in the area said.
"We have to often allow parking on both sides of Kiran Shankar Roy Road to accommodate the rising number of vehicles," said an officer.
On September 28, 2007, the high court had issued a series of orders towards protecting the Victoria Memorial from vehicular pollution following a petition filed by environment activist Subhas Datta.
The order banned parking of cars within a 3km radius of the Memorial and directed the state government to shift the Esplanade bus terminus to an area beyond 3km of the monument.
The state had appealed against the order in the Supreme Court but the apex court upheld the high court's ruling.
"Years have passed since, but no step has been taken to implement the court's directive. So I raised the issue before the court today," Datta said.
While hearing Datta, Chief Justice Sivagnanam raised the issue of the problem of inadequate parking space around the high court building and said the registrar general had informed him about the regular complaints by advocates about the scarcity of space to park vehicles.
Datta informed the judge that the state government had initiated a plan to construct a building for parking vehicles on Kiran Shankar Roy Road, opposite the City Civil Court, where an office of the panchayat department was located.
Senior PWD officials said the Panchayat Bhavan was demolished to make way for a multi-tier parking lot but the plan was shelved owing to several complications.
"The police raised a red flag saying the road space in front was not enough to ensure a continuous flow of vehicles to and from the proposed parking lot," said a senior PWD official.
Even officials from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) raised objections to constructing a parking lot at the proposed place. Senior engineers said between the high court building and the Assembly lies a brick swear line and it was almost impossible to tamper with this duct."There is an 18ft brick sewer and it goes under Raj Bhavan right up to Palmer Bazar pumping station. This is a very important connection," said a senior KMC official.
After abandoning the plan to construct the parking lot sometime in 2017, the PWD came up with an alternative. A plan was drawn up to construct an underground parking lot at Khudhiram Anushilan Kendra but it was never taken up for execution.
"The way out could be to construct a parking lot on land parcels along Strand Road that are under the port trust," said a police officer.
The bench fixed June 23 to discuss the issue again and asked the state's advocate-general to be present that day.
