JOIN USThe Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) may clamp down on all unauthorised hoardings in the City. It had a detailed discussion on the subject on Saturday.
Sources in the BBMP said that the meeting decided to ban illegal hoardings and discourage new advertisement boards in a bid to restore the City’s beauty. “There are just 2,300 authorised hoardings in the City whereas more than 25,000 billboards are illegal. The advertisement department earns Rs 23 crore a year while the expenditure is Rs 10 crore. An assessment by the BBMP shows that the leakage of financial resources is close to Rs 400 crore,” a source claimed.
At the meeting, a senior corporator pulled up the officials of the advertisement section. “What is the need to give permission for hoardings, which not only spoils the beauty of the City but also results in huge revenue loss to the Palike exchequer?”
Official reply
Corporators in the taxation and finance committee demanded why the BBMP officials failed to give the actual number of hoardings in the City to the Upa Lokayukta despite his repeated instructions to provide him the information. The officials’ reply that the survey of all the hoardings was under way in all the eight zones annoyed the corporators.
BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana said at the meeting that the additional commissioner had been directed to probe into the irregularities in the advertisement section but till now the report had not been submitted while the official assigned to the task had been transferred.
It may be recalled that the leader of the ruling party in the BBMP Council, N R Ramesh, had submitted a report in the BBMP Council with pictures of illegal hoardings but no action has been taken to date. It also emerged at the meeting that BBMP officials had allowed an advertiser to erect hoardings in the City despite a criminal complaint having being lodged by the Palike against illegal hoardings.