Crying hoarse over mushrooming of illegal hoardings across the city, several councillors blamed officials for turning a blind eye to this, thereby causing loss of revenue to Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Raising the issue at the council meeting here on Tuesday, the former Deputy Mayor S. Harish pointed out that several illegal hoardings had mushroomed across the city and that the dimension of many of them was more than what was approved. He blamed two officials in the BBMP’s advertisement department for the mushrooming of illegal hoardings. “Even the City Police Commissioner had written to BBMP that hoardings should be removed,” Mr. Harish said, adding that officials concerned had failed to implement BBMP Commissioner’s order to remove 535 hoardings in the city. If increased dimension of hoardings is taken into consideration a lot more revenue can be earned, he added. Byrasandra councillor M. Nagaraj opined that if officials had regularised the 535 hoardings, BBMP could have garnered Rs. 150 crore. “Even though the agencies were ready to pay for regularisation, the officials failed to capitalise on the opportunity,” he said.
Pattabhiramanagar councillor C.K. Ramamurthy sought to know how nod was given for installing 5,000 benches across the city without it being approved by the standing committees concerned. Commissioner M. Lakshminarayana said he would direct Additional Commissioner Hemoji Nayak to look into the issue and submit a report.
