Efforts of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) to rein in defaulting advertisement agencies have started showing results. Two weeks after sending notice to the agencies, the civic body has collected over 25 per cent of the target amount.

According to officials, the municipal corporation has received Rs 2.5 crore from about 20 agencies, against the total dues of Rs 8 crore from 58 agencies. The current revenue collection is a shot in the arm for the cash-strapped civic body that had not earned a penny on the advertisement head from outdoor ad agencies in the past five years.

“We had sent notices to the outdoor agencies and almost all the big agencies responded and cleared their payments. Some have given us post-dated cheques that we are yet to encash. Many other agencies have asked for a few days’ time after which they will make the payments. The payments were made after we threatened to pull down all hoardings,” said Shailesh Chandra Diwakar, the officer on special duty to PMC commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pal.

Taking note of the positive response of the hoarding agencies, for the time being, the PMC has suspended its plan of coercive action against the defaulters.

Last month, the civic body had identified around 58 agencies, which had put up over 4,000 billboards — both big and small — along almost all the important stretches of the capital. Notices were sent to all the agencies and were asked to clear the dues at the earliest.

Even in December last year, the civic body had begun the exercise of removing unauthorised hoardings from the city and about 100 of them were pulled down. But a group of agency owners filed a case against PMC in Patna High Court, which directed the civic body to stop its coercive action against the advertisers.

“In a judgment passed last month, the court asked PMC to take action against the advertisers but gave them some waiver in the penalty we were imposing on them,” Diwakar said.