An advertisement policy for Calcutta, the draft of which was published in mid-2022, is yet to be finalised, allowing an abundance of illegal and ill-maintained billboards to line up along the streets.
Mayor Firhad Hakim told The Telegraph on Saturday that the policy will be adopted by March 2025.
The policy, once adopted, promises to reduce the number of hoardings and set a deadline for removing all temporary hoardings put up across the city ahead of Durga Puja but remain on the pavements for weeks after.
Hakim said on Saturday that the advertisement policy is now with the state municipal affairs and urban development department. The department’s nod is required before the Kolkata Municipal Corporation can adopt it. Hakim, the mayor of Calcutta, is also Bengal’s urban development and municipal affairs minister.
“The policy is now being checked by the department of urban development and municipal affairs. I am hoping that it will be finalised and adopted by March,” he said.
An official of the KMC said the mayoral council of the civic body had passed the advertisement policy. It was then placed before a session of the KMC and passed there, too. “It is now in the final step, an examination by the department. If it approves it, we can adopt the policy,” said the official.
The proposed policy has the provision for declaring some areas as no-advertisement zones. “It has also proposed that no private hoarding should be allowed on two streets — Park Street and Camac Street,” said the official. Billboards displaying messages and services rendered by government agencies can be displayed on these streets.
There is also a proposal to not allow billboards on the two sides of the Parama flyover, a stretch that has become cluttered with billboards hogging the attention of motorists.
During a drive through parts of the city on Sunday, The Telegraph found billboards next to each other, with almost no space between them, on stretches of EM Bypass, at Lake Market, at the Rashbehari crossing and at Esplanade.
Besides temporary hoardings, ones hanging from poles or railings with a bamboo frame supporting the flex were found in many other places.
A KMC official said regular drives take place to pull down illegal hoardings and billboards.
Hakim had in March 2023 said he wanted some changes in the draft advertisement policy. “I am not happy with the (draft) advertisement policy. I have suggested some changes. If you travel along roads in Kolkata, there are hoardings one after another and very close to each other,” he had said. “So many hoardings so close to each other do not allow someone sitting in a moving vehicle to register their contents.”
The Calcutta High Court recently came down on the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation for illegal hoardings multiplying across Salt Lake and other areas in its jurisdiction. The division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya expressed its dissatisfaction about the“casual attitude of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation over the removal of billboards from areas falling under its jurisdiction”.
