Billboards being pulled down at different places by workers of Cuttack Municipal Corporation. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, May 8: The Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) has decided to pull down all billboards and hoardings within the city limits.

“We have already started the dismantling operation. More than 100 billboards and hoardings have been pulled down since Thursday. We have targeted to remove all the hoardings by May 15,” mayor Saumendra Ghosh told The Telegraph.

“The municipal council had taken the decision after there was no response to a tender that had invited bidders for the advertisement rights for erection of hoardings, frames and glow signs by way of granting yearly licence for 2011-12,” the mayor said.

Earlier, the civic body had decided to outsource the collection of tax on advertisement through billboards and hoardings within the city limits on government and municipal land.

Accordingly, a tender for the purpose had been called with the offset price fixed at Rs 1.20 crore for the bidders for 2011-12. The CMC’s annual earnings from licence fee from hoardings are between Rs 75 lakh and Rs 80 lakh. However, by outsourcing the collection of tax on advertisement through billboards and hoardings, the civic body hoped to increase its annual earnings by more than Rs 40 lakh by fixing the offset price for the bidding at Rs 1.20 crore.

Mushrooming of illegal hoardings and unauthorised billboards had been cause of concern for the civic body. With apparently no clear information on either the number of hoardings in the city or the number put up without sanction, the civic body was failing to collect the licence fee for a substantially large number of hoardings.

“Keeping it in view, we decided to remove all billboards and hoardings within the city limits and start afresh by way of auction,” municipal commissioner R.N. Nanda told The Telegraph today.

“All licences issued earlier for billboards and hoardings expired on March 31,” the municipal commissioner said.

The civic body had declared the area in front of Ravenshaw University, Bajrakabati, Chandi Chhak and areas adjacent to judicial establishments as “hoarding free zones”.

The CMC plans to regulate the using of any private land, buildings and rooftops by ensuring proper agreements with the concerned owner. “Size of the hoardings, the distance from electric cables, location and the distance from a tree will be taken into account to ensure that the hoardings do not violate civic norms and are not placed at vantage points,” a senior CMC official said.

There had been complaints that billboards and hoardings at vantage points were blocking visibility in the roads and causing accidents, he said.