BMP’s hoarding ban: Who’ll bell fat cats?

BMP’s hoarding ban: Who’ll bell fat cats?
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Bangalore’s approach to hoardings is completely confused, and advertisers are taking advantage of the confusion.

While hoardings show little concern for safety and city aesthetics, advertisers continue to blot the city with more hoardings than permitted. A High Court stay on one board is used to erect more displays. And the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) has ostensibly decided to ban hoardings altogether.

BMP records underreport hoardings, as they acknowledge just about 900 hoardings in the city. That, when the civic body collected about Rs 12 crore as advertisement taxes two years ago. This year’s budget says the ban would cause a revenue loss of Rs 5 crore. That is an interesting example of muddled BMP mathematics.

Three years ago the Lokayuktha had ordered the BMP to plug leakages in ad revenue and subsequently the civic body had shown an increase in revenues.

Last year the BMP had proposed a revision in advertisement rules and had thought of dividing the city into four zones with a VIP area as a no-hoarding zone. The civic body then went on to sanction many hoardings, reportedly on a pilot basis.

Cantilever gantry, full gantry and unipole hoardings were sanctioned. A gantry hoarding is a display across the road and a cantilever is a L shaped hoarding supported by a single column on the footpath.

The civic body had justified this by saying that one side of the display would be used for road signages. But they have proved more a stumbling block to pedestrian traffic than serving any purpose. The civic body had also sanctioned bus bays to be erected by advertisers along with about 27 skywalks.

No skywalk or pedestrian bridge in the city has been successful: people hardly use them. Eventually skywalks and pedestrian bridges end up just as hoardings.