To save the city from ugly, illegal hoardings, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to ban all temporary political-religious billboards across the city.
To save the city from ugly, illegal hoardings, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to ban all temporary political-religious billboards across the city.
“Civic officials have prepared a new policy to permanently ban all temporary hoardings. People will be allowed to erect hoardings only on the permanent billboard structures in the city. The move will help the civic body generate more revenue, as well as keep the city clean. These illegal hoardings disfigure the city’s skyline and destroy the look of heritage precincts,” said an senior civic official who is working on the new hoarding policy.
The BMC’s license department was motivated to push for the policy after chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s order to remove all illegal hoarding featuring their photographs.
“After that, we asked our civic officials to pull down all such hoardings, banners and posters. We even put in additional machinery for the execution,” said an official. As a result, the corporation has removed around 45,000 such hoardings and banners in the last two months.
Once the new policy is in place, political parties and religious groups will be discouraged from putting up unauthorised hoardings and posters as it will become a punishable offence.
“We will prosecute the offenders. Once it becomes law, political leaders will not be able to prevent us from taking action and charging the hefty fine. If anyone wishes to erect hoardings, they can use the permanent structures across the city, but their rates are quite high. To erect an illuminated hoarding costs Rs605 per sq mt, while it is Rs200 sq mt for non-illuminated billboards.”
At the moment, it is difficult for civic officials to track down or identify party members who have put up the hoardings. Civic officials try to fix responsibility on the people whose photographs appear on the banners, but the leaders usually deny having any clue about them. “It is therefore very difficult to fine anyone. Party workers put photographs of senior political leaders on the hoardings, but when we contact them, they say they are not aware who included their picture, and that it has been done without their knowledge or permission,” said an official.
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