If a new evidence is to be believed, Bangalore city has more than 20 times more number of ‘illegal’ hoardings than what the civic body claims. While BBMP claims that there are 2,260 legal and 1,017 illegal hoardings in the city, an evidence provided by a councillor claims that the city accounts for nearly 23,000 hoardings. This means nearly 21,000 hoardings put up across the city is illegal.
Yediyur Councillor N.R. Ramesh submitted to the BBMP council on Tuesday a 900-page document based on a video footage enlisting around 23,000 hoardings that has been identified after covering 3,800-km distance in the city. He also submitted a copy to Upalokayukta Subash B. Adi on Monday.
Assistant Commissioner (Advertisement) Manjunath Swamy had written to the Bangalore district in-charge Minister Ramalinga Reddy in July that there were only 661 illegal hoardings in the city. He, however, told the Upalokayukta that there were 1,017 illegal hoardings.
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The former Mayor S. Harish said that many of the hoardings were illegally put up in the garb of self advertisement and many of them had come up in even burial grounds and lakes and several other public places.
Meanwhile, BBMP Commissioner M. Lakshminarayana ordered the Advertisement Department to make an inventory of all hoardings in the 38-hour video and publish it on the BBMP website in a month’s time. He said if anybody had legal documents, they should get it verified by BBMP. Otherwise they would be declared illegal and a private firm would be given the contract to remove all ‘illegal hoardings’.