Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is still struggling to deal with illegally erected hoardings. Several hoardings have quietly started reappearing in various parts of the city. These are proper structures with iron scaffoldings and not hurriedly put up political banners on wooden frames. There were numerous illegal hoardings and display boards in the city and monitoring is not an easy job. It is nice that the Bombay High Court had ordered political parties and leaders to pay up penalties according to their status in organisations of their choice. BMC will have to act tough against those responsible for illegal hoardings that have been displayed in different parts of the city. As per the law hoardings cannot be placed near schools, colleges, hospitals, at road junctions, or heritage structures. With such stringent conditions, no hoardings can come up anywhere. All assistant engineers and overseers are to be instructed to identify roads featuring illegal hoardings and boards and those who erect illegal hoardings have to be fined as much as the fee prescribed for a legal billboard and the hoarding should also be pulled down. BMC must look forward for revised draft advertisement policy to deal with the situation.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
