Eyesore of hoardings likely to go from important roads

Eyesore of hoardings likely to go from important roads
Deccan Herald

The BMP draft proposes to ban all advertisements in Zone A, which includes Vidhana Soudha, Lalbagh and Cubbon Park.

If the draft advertisement bye-law gets the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) Council’s approval, then some of the important road stretches in the city will be cleared of all advertisement hoardings.

The draft advertisement bye-law which is pending approval before the BMP Council for the last four months divides the city into four zones — A, B, C and D based on their importance in terms of heritage, political residence and others.

As such the draft proposal recommends a ban on all advertisements in Zone A which includes Vidhana Soudha, Cubbon Park, Lalbagh and its surroundings.

Zone B will be a restrictive zone in terms of height (30 feet) and width (12 by 24 ft) of the hoarding, while Zone C will peg the height at 40 feet and width at 20 by 40 ft. Zone D will permit hoardings up to whatever height the advertiser pleases, sources at the BMP said.

Stating that this is a measure to protect the beauty of some of the important road stretches within BMP limits, the sources said that some areas in Zone A have not shown much potential for advertisements in the previous years. When asked whether the ban in Zone A and restriction in Zone B would affect BMP’s revenue from advertisements, sources said that whatever is lost in these areas would be compensated in other areas.

According to sources, the advertisement bye-law had not been amended since 1956. “There has been a lot of changes since then. For example, there were no stipulations for tax on ads on property belonging to the railways, government, BMTC and others. The draft proposal takes all these into account,” they said.

‘Unscientific draft’

Some sections are not happy with the draft proposal. Stating it has been designed unscientifically, the sources alleged that it has been drafted without consulting agencies like Karnataka Pollution Control Board and others.

“For example, Zone D does not have restrictions on the height of the hoardings.

The earlier bye-law had restricted the height to 30 ft, in the belief that the viewing eye, especially those of vehicle users, should not be made to look higher, lest it increases chances of accidents,” the sources said.

Besides, the penalty of Rs 5,000 for first time violation and Rs 500 per day on continued violation seems to promote the idea of not following norms. Instead, the advertiser should not be permitted to put up hoardings at all, or the one put up in violation should be removed, the sources said.

Revenue

The BMP also estimates that revenue worth Rs 25 to 35 crore could be collected by enforcing the new comprehensive proposal, sources said, adding that advertisement rates would remain the same. The BMP could net Rs 20 crore as revenue from advertisements in the last year.

Mayor R Narayanaswamy said that he has asked the BMP Working Committee to clear all pending files and to give a reason in case any of them was not cleared. When questioned about this particular file, he said that all files will be looked into and cleared at the earliest.