Revamped ad bylaws soon

Revamped ad bylaws soon
Deccan Herald

It’s finally here. Three months from now, some of the City roads will be totally free of hoardings, while on some others they may well be towering over you. Hoardings, banners, buntings and suchlike, along with their new-age counterparts - electronic display boards and others -will all come under a new set of rules and regulations.

The new advertisement bylaws of the BMP, which have proposed zoned regulation of outdoor advertisements, have received the government’s approval and the gazette notification has been issued, official sources said. This means that the advertisement bylaws concerning Bangalore have been changed for the first time, since they originally came into being in 1956.

When contacted, BMP Special Commissioner Gaurav Gupta said that as per the Municipal Corporations Act, the new bylaws will be effective three months from the date of notification. (The BMP council had, in fact, approved the amendments in 2005.)


Besides the zoning clauses, the new bylaws have scope for inclusion of new-age ad media like electronic display boards, and of course the traditional shop adverts (SAs).

SAs are the customer-luring displays generally put up by shops and establishments alongside their nameboards, on their walls, premises and so on. (It could be the pan buntings in your corner shop or the floor-to-roof displays showcased in the malls.) It is learnt that the ongoing discussion in the BMP is about collecting SA tax along with the property tax itself. The new bylaws are expected to boost the BMP’s ad revenue three-fold to about Rs 16.85 crore. (It has been just Rs 6.19 crore and Rs 3 crore in the previous two years.) BMP officials sought to point out that, contrary to public perception, the returns from just the hoardings are minimal: the annual collection from the 1000-odd licensed hoardings in BMP limits is Rs 1.80 crore (Rs 18,000 each).

CITY SPLIT INTO FOUR ZONES

The new advertisement bylaws divide the City into four zones, specifying height restrictions on hoardings in each.

Zone A (parts of Raj Bhavan Road, Vidhana Soudha limits, Ambedkar Veedhi, KR Circle, Basaveshwara Circle, Cubbon Park and Lalbagh limits, etc.,): Hoardings and others of its ilk are banned.

Zone B (Kamaraj Road, MG Road and Brigade Road, etc): The maximum height for hoardings limited to 40 ft from the ground.

Zone C (Mekhri Circle, Yeshwanthpur Circle, Sampige Road-Malleshwaram, Race Course Road, Cunningham Road, etc): The maximum height for hoardings limited to 50 ft from the ground.

Zone D (Mathikere Main Road, Pottery Road, Bull Temple Road, etc): No height restrictions for hoardings.