Ahead of Durga Puja, KMC starts pulling down illegal hoardings in city

Kolkata: In a bid to reduce the city’s visual pollution ahead of Durga Puja, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has started pulling down illegal hoardings while asking the municipal commissioner to form a comprehensive advertisement policy.

Addressing the Press on Friday, Hakim confirmed that the civic body has already started pulling down illegal hoardings in the city. Such an exercise is taken up every year ahead of the Durga Puja but this year it is said to have started early.

The Mayor further added that he has also instructed the municipal commissioner, Binod Kumar to form a comprehensive policy regarding advertisement.

Early this year, KMC mentioned in its Budget for 2023-24 a new advertisement policy to pave the way for a clean and green city that is free from cluttering of advertisements and ensure no advertisements/hoardings are allowed on dangerous/dilapidated buildings.

An official said that KMC is already conducting round-the-clock surveillance to prevent the erection of illegal hoardings both on private premises and on road side space.

Constant cleaning, defacement and a drive for removing illegal hoardings, banners, kiosks etc. are being made on a regular basis at day and night.

A draft KMC (Advertisement Policy) Regulation 2022 to regulate outdoor advertisement in the city was published in 2022 but the Mayor said that some changes were proposed by him and the new policy may become effective from the financial year 2023-24.

Some of the features of this draft policy included restrictions on displaying advertisements on “no advertisement zone’ and ‘green zone’. It will ensure existing advertisements do not block, conceal or inconvenience the public view of the architectural features of any building.

The policy will ensure that hoarding structures are fenced with appropriate fabrication to maintain the aesthetic value of the hoardings. Where there are no such commercial displays available to the hoardings, the hoardings should be covered up by white flex to maintain the aesthetic value of the city. Importantly, no advertisement/hoarding shall be allowed on such buildings which are declared as dangerous/dilapidated/insecure by the building department of KMC.

The policy emphasises the use of eco-friendly biodegradable cloth materials as an alternative to traditionally used PVC flexes to reduce pollution. Moreover, the use of renewable sources of energy for illumination has been suggested to decrease carbon footprint. Also, to increase the aesthetic beauty of the city, it is preferable to construct a circular framing unipole/monopole with a standard-size display, the policy states. The initiative has been taken to allow the submission of applications relating to the permission of all kinds of display in online mode and the specific service will be provided to applicants within a specified time through a user-friendly and transparent system. The proposed system is yet to be finalised and launched.