Netas, don’t splash your faces!

Netas, don’t splash your faces!
BMP Meet To Ask Parties To End Poster Menace
The Times of India

Bangalore: People would want to see your faces only when you perform, not otherwise. So please refrain from splashing your photos on posters, buntings, hoardings all across the city. This is the tone and tenor of missives being sent out to political parties by the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP).

Taking cognisance of rampant disfigurement of public spaces by posters put up by political parties, the BMP would soon be calling for a meeting of political leaders to explain to them the perils of a city littered with posters. Sources told The Times of India: “More than the leaders themselves, it is their followers and small-time party workers who cash in on having their faces on a huge poster. If they want to wish a particular leader on his birthday, they ensure that their faces are also all across the poster or banner. They use such occasions as a platform to promote themselves too. We want to stop this practice.’’

The meeting, explain sources, would be held in a week’s time where political leaders would be informed that there is a recent Supreme Court order asking political parties to refrain from having any form of propaganda material — posters, buntings, hoardings, cut-outs, arches — spread all over the city. “We might even impose a penalty on offenders. In the course of the meeting we will tell them that we would even write to the Election Commission asking them to intervene,’’ say sources.

For months now, the BMP has been undertaking nocturnal drives to rid Bangalore of what an official describes as “eyesores.’’ In the process, a gangman even succumbed to death from a height of 12 feet whilst trying to yank off a poster. The poster removal drive, explain officials, has shown up the following: the worst offenders are posters from party workers, the next offenders are film posters and graffiti. “We will also be calling members from the Film Chamber of Commerce, rather than call theatre owners. Though we penalise those who stick up such unauthorised posters, they return overnight.’’

Does anybody even remember the Disfigurement of Public Property Act...?

LOOMING LARGE

Most common unauthorised material: birthday greetings to sundry netas from stooges and lackeys, festival greetings from political leaders and corporators.
Worst-affected areas: Shivajinagar, Jayamahal, Chamarajpet, Ulsoor, Yeshwantpur, HMT.