JOIN USSoon, details of all hoardings in city will be at your fingertips
Having come under criticism for failing to check illegal hoardings in the city, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has now taken up GIS mapping of all billboards under its jurisdiction.
BBMP officials claim that 75% of advertisement boards in the city have been mapped so far. That translates to 10,300-odd hoardings and shop-front display boards. Just 2,500-3,000 hoardings and display boards may be left for mapping. At present, these details are available only on the BBMP’s intranet connection and can be accessed by officials. The BBMP says it will publish these details on its website for everyone to see. Once in public domain, anyone can get information about any hoarding in the city.
GIS-mapped icon
Clicking on a GIS-mapped icon will yield a box on the screen, showing details, along with photographs of the hoarding, such as the name of the agency and its proprietor, whether it is legal, advertisement tax paid, date of permit issued, size of the hoarding, next date of renewal, etc. Details of litigation, if any, will be available, too.
The BBMP has added another feature to the GIS-based property portal. Besides identifying each property with a separate Property Identification (PID) number, the portal also has icons to show the hoardings.
BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said the details would be available online soon. “We are also in the process of removing the structures where illegal hoardings are put up,” he added.
‘Ad scam exaggerated’
Palike officials have disputed the claims made by then assistant commissioner of the BBMP, K Mathai, in his enquiry report on the advertisement scam. Mathai had stated that the BBMP lost Rs 2,000 crore in the last eight years because of illegal advertisement hoardings.
“No doubt, illegal hoardings had mushroomed in the city and the BBMP did suffer losses. But to put the loss at Rs 2,000 crore in the last eight years is an exaggeration. Now, we have the latest data and can say the previous estimate of loss was incorrect,” an official said, requesting anonymity.
The official said Mathai had surveyed only the Shanthala Nagar ward, which covers the central business district (CBD), and multiplied the figure by 198 wards. “This is the wrong approach to arrive at a figure. We have data to show that there are hardly any hoardings in 42 wards,” he said.
But Mathai, who is now administrative officer at Karnataka Sakala Services, has stood his ground and said that if his report was exaggerated, the BBMP was free to order an enquiry against him. “All statements in my report on the advertisement scam are supported by byelaws. They aren’t a figment of my imagination,” he said. He said that after surveying Shanthala Nagar, he had volunteered to survey all the 198 wards but the BBMP didn’t give him permission.