Cuttack, May 11: The civic body's online system for registration of hoardings against payment of fees has paid rich dividends.

With technical support of Deloitte, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation launched the "web-enabled system for registration of advertisers and self-declaration of advertisements" with immediate effect at a meeting with various advertising agencies on March 17.

Following the meeting, the civic body had fixed March 31 as deadline for payment on tariff demands made for 2016-17 on the basis of self-declarations by the advertisers.

The municipal corporation further declared that the hoardings and billboards of the advertisers who failed to make the online payment within the deadline would be treated as unauthorised and removed without notice.

The advertisers were also warned that penalty for unauthorised hoardings at the rate of 20 times the prevailing advertisement tariff would be imposed with effect from April 1, 2016.

"The new system has brought rich returns. Within the deadline of March 31, 47 agencies registered online and made self-declaration of advertisements. Payments against tariff demands for 2016-17 touched around Rs 2.10 crore by April 30," said CMC deputy commissioner Manoj Kumar Behera.

The civic body had extended the payment deadline from March 31 to April 30 after detecting certain defects in the self-declaration process made by various agencies.

Self-declarations by 47 advertising agencies indicated 1,725 hoardings and billboards running to a total advertising area of nearly 2.56 lakh sqft. Of the Rs 2.10 crore of payments received from advertisers, around Rs 1.60 crore was payments towards tariff demand for the last financial year while the rest was received on account of arrears.

The corporation has withheld its advance tariff demand for the current financial year (2017-18) keeping in view certain anomalies detected in the self-declarations by the advertisers related to land on which the hoardings and billboards had come up.

"A process is on to physically verify the declarations made by the agencies. After completion of the ground survey, the advance tariff demand for 2017-18 will be made," Behera said.

The online declaration system for unauthorised hoardings was introduced to implement the Odisha Advertisement and Hoarding Policy, 2015.

The state government had rolled out the new rule through a gazette notification on January 21 last year. The new rule restricts placing of advertising devices anywhere under any category that will obstruct free movement of pedestrians or commuters.

"After completion of the physical verification of the online declaration by the agencies, process of relocation of the hoardings and billboards will be taken up following the guidelines of the new policy," said CMC additional commissioner Suman Behera.

The new policy prohibits location of billboards at major intersections, bends and curves and hoardings or advertisement boards that hinder the effectiveness of a traffic control system, such as traffic light, stop or give way signs, considering them as hazardous.

It also prescribes the distance between two advertisements to be not less than 100 metres on main city roads and highways.