PM’s Car Held
(A leading daily, 4 August 1982)

New Delhi. When the Deputy Police Commissioner (Traffic) Mrs Kiran Bedi started a drive against wrong parking last year, no one could have imagined that even the Prime Minister’s car would come into the dragnet. But the impossible happened. On 5 August, when Mrs Gandhi and her family members where away in the USA, a Traffic Sub-Inspector found a white Ambassador (DHD1817) wrongly parked outside the Yusufzai Market, Connaught Circus in the heart of the city. Only after he had made out a challan did he realize that it was the official car of the PM . The security men accompanying the car (which had gone there for repairs) pointed this out to the traffic officer. But he was adamant. Wrong parking was illegal, whether it is by a commoner or a VIP, he told the security men.     An inquiry has been ordered into the incident. As soon as the PM returned from her tour, the matter was brought to her notice. The scope of the inquiry is how was there a lack of coordination between the VIP security and the traffic wings of the Delhi police? Mrs Kiran Bedi has, however, made it public that the question of putting the heat on an officer who was merely carrying out his duties did not arise.

The incident, meanwhile has exposed a chink in the Delhi Traffic Police. The shop to which Mrs. Gandhi's car went, Handa and Company, belongs to a friend of a powerful aide of the PM.  The shop deals in car accessories and upholstery. The popularity of the shop attracts many carowners. But to take a car to the shop also invites a traffic challan because of the shop's location. The car park on the opposite pavement is usually overcrowded (as a popular restaurant and hotel are located there). The traffic police have been refusing to recognize the fact that as long as Handa and Babbar Sons, two popular car accessory dealers, are located at the Yusufzai Market, carowners are bound to park their cars outside the shops and get the fittings done. Though the existing traffic rules prohibit parking in that area, surely this reality has to be taken into the account as well. Whether the incident involving the PM’s car will awaken the Traffic Police to the realities of the situation or not is difficult to say. But Mrs Bedi’s traffic drive certainly has reached the gates of 1 Safdurjung Road.

No action against SI who challaned PM’s car
( 16 August 1982)

New Delhi, August 14. Delhi Traffic Police Chief Kiran Bedi said today that there was no question of taking any action against a traffic sub-inspector for issuing a challan involving a car used by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.     The car DHD 1817 had on August 3, during Mrs Gandhi’s trip to the United States, been taken to an upholstery shop in Connaught Circus.     Finding that the car had been parked on the road in violation of traffic rules, a sub-inspector challaned the owner of the shop outside whose shop it was parked. The fine of Rs 100 was paid by the shop owner.

According to Traffic Police, the shop keeper had been warned a day earlier not to allow cars which came for repairs, to be parked outside his shop. He had been fined after which he gave an undertaking not to do so.     The next day finding a car parked again in front of the shop, a traffic sub-inspector stopped by to question the shop owner. The latter challenged the traffic police officer to take action after pointing out that the car was used by the Prime Minister.     Undeterred, the traffic police officer challaned the shop owner.