The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has pulled down about 3,000 “unauthorised” hoardings in the city in the past two months.

About 40 of them were private hoardings that stood on terraces. In many cases, the KMC has removed the advertisements and also dismantled the iron frames that held them.

The majority of the hoardings removed were temporary, tied to poles and railings along roads.

“Some of the hoardings that have been pulled down were set up without the permission of the civic body. For the rest, the outdoor advertising agencies that had erected them were not paying the advertisement fees,” said a KMC official.

The drive against illegal hoardings, often promised and not delivered, appears to have picked up pace.

“Earlier, we used to remove about 20 private hoardings from terraces in a year. This time, we have removed 39 such hoardings in just two months,” said a senior KMC official.

A Behala resident had KMC men knocking at his door on Wednesday morning. “They pulled down the advertisement from an iron frame on my terrace. It took them nearly an hour and a half to remove the flex fitted to the 10ft-tall and 20ft-wide iron frame,” the man said.

The KMC team cut the flex down the middle and brought down the two parts, which were again cut into smaller pieces. “A demolition contractor hired by the KMC will remove the iron frame,” said a KMC official.

“We want to make it clear to the outdoor adver-
tising agencies that they must obtain permission from the KMC before setting up
any iron frame. If they do not, they will face action,” said an official.

There are about 2,500 private hoardings — the ones standing on terraces — in the city that have been set up with the KMC’s permission. The rest were set up without the civic body’s knowledge.

The safety of these structures has always been a concern. The civic body does
not check the stability of the iron structures, which KMC officials said is the responsibility of outdoor advertising agencies.

The private hoardings standing on terraces pose a serious risk because of their location — at a considerable height above the ground. “If they collapse, they can kill or seriously injure people,” said a south Calcutta resident.

More than 15 people were killed when a giant billboard collapsed in Mumbai last month.

There is another category of hoardings in Calcutta — the ones that stand on poles rising from pavements. There are about 410 such street hoardings in the city.

Metro has reported about the rickety and rusted street hoardings in many places in Calcutta.

The illegal hoardings cause a revenue loss to the KMC.

The civic body has set a target of raising ₹100 crore as advertisement revenue in the 2024-25 fiscal.

The same target was set in 2023-24 but it was later revised to ₹19 crore.

The civic body published a draft advertisement policy in 2022 but it has yet to beadopted. The policy tried to limit the number of advertisements on some streets and declare some more zones as ad-free.