GHMC identifies 1,500 illegal hoardings

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has identified 1,500 illegal hoardings across the city and is contemplating to impose huge penalty and generate about Rs 50 crore from them. 

Following instructions from GHMC Commissioner B Janardhan Reddy, the Corporation conducted a special drive to identify illegal hoardings in August, during which it was found that several circle-level officials were hand-in-glove with advertisement agencies and had turned a blind eye to assess the illegal hoardings, resulting in a huge loss to the Corporation. The Corporation has decided to issue memos to all such ground level staff.

A senior GHMC official told  that apart from 2,620 official hoardings in the GHMC limits, there are about



1,500 unauthorised hoardings which have been unaccounted for the past several years.He said that the Corporation had been generating Rs 36 crore annually and by imposing penalty on the unaccounted hoardings, it would generate another Rs 50 crore for the current financial year (2016-17).The GHMC official said that the Corporation would not spare any advertisement agency if found guilty and claimed that top priority would be given to public safety.

To ensure that the city gets rid of the menace of illegal hoardings, the GHMC is planning to come up with new guidelines which would come into force from October. Henceforth, the agencies will have to put up hoardings as per the parameters recommended by JNTU-H professor NV Ramana Rao Committee.