No parking for Deepika Padukone: Here’s why

Deepika Padukone can’t park her car in her plush Pali Hill apartment complex in South Mumbai. The actress discovered this recently when she tried to park at the apartment complex, only to be told that the parking slot had been allocated to someone else. The actress is now contemplating suing the managing committee of the society that has denied parking for her apartment.

What’s it all about?

Until 2011, Deepika Padukone used to live in the Pali Hill apartment complex, where she also had a parking slot allotted to her. She then moved to a new place in Prabhadevi. From 2014, she rented out her previous flat. Reportedly, the flat has two tenants from 2014, and there was an 8 month gap between the two tenants. In the interim, the managing committee of the society is said to have allocated the parking slot to another resident through a ‘lottery system’.

Here’s what Madhu Poplai, Secretary of the PHRA (Pali Hill Residents Association) has to say,

The lottery system was established 25 years ago and the rules are the same for everyone. But it has irked Deepika and she has threatened to sue the managing committee. The spot for Deepika’s tenant was vacant for over eight months when they can be reserved for only three. It was given to another resident after a lottery. 

Two unnamed residents of the complex have a different take though. They say,

She’s being troubled for being an actress. Few active members gave away the main parking spot that belonged to Deepika for almost 10 years without any kind of notice or intimation to her. When she arrived in Pali Hill the other day, and wanted to park her car, she was taken aback as she had no idea about any of this. When she asked the concerned people about it, she was told that the management can’t do much if she is always busy and travelling.

Parking problems are not unusual to Mumbai, which is a very crowded city. The problem is acute in the more prosperous parts of the city, where each family often has multiple cars. While multi-level parking lots offer some respite from parking problems, they’re still too expensive for many given how expensive real estate is in Mumbai. The only way to get around this issue is to encourage the use of public transport and limiting car ownership.

Via MumbaiMirror