City

PMC action not above board

Given 24 hrs by HC to get rid of illegal hoardings, PMC tries hard but stops action at 7pm; assures that its drive will continue

Siddharth Gadkari

Posted On Friday, March 15, 2013 at 09:03:28 AM

Mohan Patil / Manoj Bidkar

PMC workers remove illegal hoardings at Khandoji Baba Chowk and bring down the frame (below) for a hoarding at RTO Chowk

After the Bombay High Court ordered the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to rid the city of all illegal hoardings within 24 hours on Wednesday, the PMC tried – but totally failed to do so.

A hasty way to get a job done

Some employees pressed into action had no idea how to bring down the framework and got to work on the base (below); of course it fell on one of their vehicles, damaging it

The PMC pooled all its resources to get rid of illegal hoarding in the city — even a domestic gas cylinder from their pantry! A PMC employee used it to power a welding machine to bring down a hoarding

All departments of the civic body took part in the mission to bring down 6,573 illegal advertising boards, including 131 hoardings.

However, at 7 pm on Tuesday, PMC called it a day and said action will continue till all illegal hoardings are removed. The HC on Wednesday had also asked for a report on illegal hoardings to be submitted by March 15.

The anti-encroachment department, sky sign permission department, building permission department and health department collectively carried out the drive against all the illegal signs in the city.

Meanwhile, PMC claimed they had removed almost 600 unauthorised hoardings within a year.

According to PMC, there are 2,121 legal hoardings in the city. Of these, 1,632 hoarding owners had filed cases in HC against the civic body.

As per a 2003 hoarding policy, PMC decided to give new permission to new hoardings or renew contracts of existing hoardings for two years. However, the process will begin from April 1, 2013 onwards.

Therefore, legally, not a single hoarding or banner is legal as of Wednesday.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Rajendra Jagtap (anti-encroachment department) said, “We have concentrated on removing all illegal hoardings.

Till 7 pm, we got rid of 6,573 different advertising boards. We have tried our best to remove a maximum of illegal hoardings in 24 hours.

We will extend action. As of now, we are not giving any new permissions or renewals for any hoardings.

The process will start from next month. We have fixed a rate of Rs 222 per sq m for hoardings.”

Ramesh Shelar, head of the anti-encroachment department, said, “During the drive, we filed a police complaint against Balasaheb Ganjave, the president of Pune Outdoor Hoarding Association, for creating obstructions while a deputy engineer was on government duty in Deccan Gymkhana.

We removed 71 hoardings on the railway station premises alone.”

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