A Calcutta High Court order issued on November 21 and uploaded on its website early on Thursday directs the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) to issue notices to all advertising agencies and individuals responsible for erecting around 2,500 illegal billboards.

The order issued by the division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya directs the Salt Lake civic body to remove the billboards and recover the associated cost from the advertisers if they do not comply.

The order reads: “We direct the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation to serve notice on all illegal advertising agencies, or the persons who erected such illegal hoarding and advertisement, to dismantle the structures within 48 hours, failing which the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation shall dismantle the same and recover the cost thereof from those advertisers. Apart from the above action, the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation shall exercise their power conferred under the West Bengal
Municipal Corporation Act 2006 as well as West Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 1976 to initiate proceedings against those persons.”

The order followed a public interest litigation in the high court stating that the mushrooming of illegal billboards in Salt Lake had led to visual pollution and impeded normal visibility in the township.

“The order has already been uploaded on the website of Calcutta High Court. It clearly states what action the Salt Lake civic body must take. Till now the corporation had turned a blind eye to the fact that illegal billboards and hoardings have mushroomed all over and the court has asked for a report that has to be filed at the next hearing date on December 20,” said advocate Divyayan Bandopadhyay, who had filed the PIL in the high court.

The counsel for the BMC had told Calcutta High Court last week that nearly 2,500 billboards had been erected illegally and only 135 had the sanction of the authorities.

Bidhannagar mayor Krishna Chakraborty told The Telegraph on Thursday that she would abide by the court order.

“We have been given a timeline and we will comply with the order passed by Calcutta High Court. We have lost a lot of revenue in terms of advertisement taxes from these illegal billboards,” Chakraborty said.

A senior civic official said that even the 135 legal billboards have run up dues and the agencies that have put up billboards across the 41 wards had last paid taxes to the civic body in the 2018-19 fiscal.