Lucknow: Armed with a high court order, the Yogi Adityanath government on Sunday banned the use of loudspeakers at temples, mosques and other public places without permission and set January 15 as the deadline to remove the amplifiers.

After receiving flak from Allahabad High Court over noise pollution in Uttar Pradesh, the state government issued detailed directives on the use of permanent loudspeakers at these places.

The high court had last month asked the state government whether the loudspeakers or public address systems at mosques, temples, churches and gurdwaras, among other places, were installed after obtaining a written permission from the authorities concerned.

Principal secretary (home) Arvind Kumar said: "On the directions of the court regarding ensuring implementation of noise pollution control rules, a government order giving detailed instructions has been issued."

This implies that sound should not go beyond the periphery of the public or private place, Kumar said.

The 10-page-order has directed a survey of permanently installed loudspeakers and issuance of show cause notice to those using them without requisite permission.

If the permission to install loudspeakers at religious or public places is not sought before January 15, the government will start removing these from January 20.

The order requires district magistrates to categorise areas into industrial, commercial, residential and silence zones. Each area has separate maximum limits for permissible sound levels.

Saffron police station

The Adityanath government has painted a police station in Lucknow saffron, changing its colour for the first time in 80 years as part of a saffron-painting drive that the chief minister is said to be "loving".

Over the past two days, the Uttar Pradesh government painted the green-and-white boundary wall of the Haj committee office in Lucknow saffron before trying to change it back to white and finally settling for cream.

The colour of Kaiserbagh police station in old Lucknow had been a combination of yellow and white since it was set up in 1939 under British rule. On Saturday evening, labourers were deployed to paint it saffron with spray colour guns. It took less than 30 minutes to repaint the police station, a government source said.

The Adityanath government has in the past three months painted saffron over 100 school buildings and many state transport corporation buses.