Mayor’s hoarding ban committee never met

Mayor’s hoarding ban committee never met
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The hoarding contractors cannot ask for a better civic body! The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike(BMP) last year decided to revise its advertisement rules and while the proposal was under government’s consideration, they decided to ban the all hoardings in the city.

Four days after the announcement last month Mayor Mumtaz Begum set up a committee under her chairmanship to review the ban without any official as member.

She had assured the council on April 3 that a ‘final’ report would be made within 15 days and then she went on her China binge. The result is that the committee never met to take any decision on the hoarding ban.

Deputy mayor M Laxminarayana who is a member of the committee is now talking in support of hoardings. ‘‘It is difficult to ban the hoardings as many of them have High Court stay orders.

I have called a meeting of officials on Wednesday and we will soon take a decision,’’ he said. However Begum was not available when contacted by this website's newspaper.

Leader of the ruling party H Ravindra said hoardings must be banned. ‘‘The cityscape is polluted due to hoardings and the BMP getting a bad name due to the contractors. We will meet soon to ban hoardings in the city,’’ he maintained.

The hoarding ban would not lead to any major loss to BMP as advertisement revenue to the civic body is about Rs 8 crore and that has no major effect on the civic budget with an outlay of Rs 1,800 crore, Ravindra added.