Hyderabad, January 27: GHMC has decided not to renew annual licences for hoarding put up at religious places like temples and mosques, graveyards and on drains, lake or river beds once the period is completed later this year. It has also filed an affidavit to this effect in the A.P. High Court.
The municipal corporation appears to be determined to break the designs of vested interests behind hoardings put up in the religious places with the step as part of its overall effort to bring some order into the chaotic advertisement wing.
This step along with the new advertising policy in the offing would help bring down the number of hoardings considerably in the twin cities, said Additional Commissioner (Advertisements) K. Dhanunjaya Reddy. Perhaps, for the first time, notices are being issued to ad agencies for each and every hoarding or uni-pole with separate records opened.
After ascertaining whether annual payments are being made regularly or not, amount of fees paid, notices are being issued. These are also based on whether the size is as per the prescribed norms, lit or unlit and so on. It was also decided to centralise and computerise the issue of advertisement index number for each and every hoarding indicating the location.
The advertisement identification number would be akin to the property tax number or the trade license number being issued through the central server at the head office to minimise the scope of manipulation at the field level, he explained.
Identification numbers were issued a couple of years ago too but it was done manually and much to the shock of the senior officials it was realised that several fake ones were generated. Thus far, little more than 400 illegal hoardings were removed and about 500 have been branded for various wrongs like not paying advertisement fees regularly, irregular size, etc.
About 2,600 hoardings and uni-poles have been recognised as legitimate. Licences for giant advertisement poles erected on road medians and lollipops too are not to be renewed once their respective contract period ends while some of them have been removed, Mr. Reddy added.
–Agencies