Hoardings on private buildings will soon be regulated by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 29: The municipal corporation has drafted an advertisement regulation bill to control the display of advertisement boards and hoardings on private buildings and vehicles.

At present, there is no control on hoardings and billboards on private buildings with people using their private space for advertisement to earn money without caring for safety norms. The corporation is losing revenue because of this, an official said.

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Krishan Kumar said the bill was discussed today in the monthly meeting of the corporation and would be sent to the state government for approval.

“This bill aims to assure three things that include safety, visual pollution and revenue generation. Private building owners never care for structural or peripheral safety while putting up the hoardings that even violate the normal size norm. Besides, these advertisement boards often create unsavoury scenes on roadsides and visual distraction,” he said.

According to the officials, earlier, the private building owners used to pay Rs 40 per sqft and did not inform the corporation about the size and number of hoardings they were putting up on their buildings. Now, the new rule will force them to pay 50 per cent of the amount paid by those, who use government places for erecting advertisement boards.

At present, a person has to pay Rs 970 per sqft of space on government allotted land to put up an advertisement. The new bill will force the private building owners to pay Rs 485 per sqft of space.

Besides, the civic body will decide on the size of boards and hoardings to be erected on the buildings.

The maximum size permitted by the corporation for such hoardings on government land is 20X10 ft. It will try to confine the private hoardings within this limit.

There have been conditions for checking structural strength and safety of the buildings that apply for putting up such hoardings on them.

The commissioner said that though there had been rules for regulating mobile towers on buildings, there was no such regulation on advertisement hoardings on private properties, and the building owners were taking advantage of such a loophole.

Even private vehicles that carry advertisements will also come under this regulation. Accordingly, the city buses, private buses plying in the city and autorickshaws that display advertisements will be monitored and forced to follow the new regulation.

Besides, various companies that have been putting up direction sign boards on roads and squares as part of their corporate social responsibility will also come under this rule.

As there is no control over the private advertising and hoardings, the corporation has no figure of such structures in the city.

“After the state government approves, this we will implement the regulation as soon as possible. We will post the names of those, who abide by the regulation on our website. Besides, people will inform us if there is anyone in their area whose name is not in the list, and we will take action against such violators,” said an official.