Bengaluru: BBMP officials of the Advertisement department have ‘fallen’ for the cards played by some of the tricksters in the city, or so, it appears. About two months ago, the civic body launched a massive drive against illegal hoardings in all the eight zones.
In this regard, a circular too was issued instructing all the zonal commissioners to remove unauthorized hoardings in their zones within a stipulated time. Now, BBMP sources have revealed that fake stay numbers are being used by advertisers in order to escape the demolition drive. According to a top official, some of the zonal commissioners who are hand-in-glove with marketing and advertising agencies have failed to check the authenticity of such stay numbers.
“The full responsibility of identifying and removing hoardings lies with the zonal commissioners. Most of these boards, which say, under stay number so and so, are fakes, to deceive the officials. Even if it’s a real stay, it’s not difficult to vacate the stay and demolish the hoarding.
But so far, no action has been initiated to vacate the stay,” said the official. He blamed the zonal engineers for turning a blind eye towards these advertisers. Some of the evidences provided by former corporator N.R Ramesh suggest that there are nearly 23,000 hoardings in the city. While the BBMP had claimed there are only 2,260 legal and 1,017 illegal hoardings in the city (in 2014), Mr Ramesh had submitted a 900-page document based on a video footage enlisting around 23,000 hoardings that have been identified on 3,800-km distance in Bengaluru.
District-in-charge minister Ramalinga Reddy admitted that these stay numbers were fake but the lethargic officials had so far not shown any interest to remove the hoardings.
“Advertisements are a big mafia and the officials are unwilling to take on anybody. It is evident that they are also involved and hence the delay in demolishing the unauthorized hoardings. Despite issuing show-cause notices to some of the officials, they have failed to respond to the drive,” he said. Without divulging much, he stressed that a closed-door meeting was held with the BBMP top officials recently to put an end to this menace.
