A bulldozer demolishes an unauthorised hoarding in Berhampur. Picture by Gopal Krishna Reddy

Berhampur, April 24: The municipal corporation has started a drive to demolish illegal hoardings here since Monday.

“We are demolishing all unauthorised hoardings. We have cancelled the licence of an advertising agency as it defaulted on payment. We have blacklisted the company’s owner,” said Ajit Kumar Mishra, Berhampur Municipal Corporation commissioner.

“We are facing shortage of resources and losing lakhs of rupees because of illegal hoardings. Efforts are on to streamline revenue collection through hoardings,” he said.

The corporation had an agreement with an advertising agency to display hoardings since October 2002, for a lease term of three years and was earning Rs 9.5 lakh a year.

But the corporation council wanted to increase the revenue amount and called for a fresh tender. The offset price was fixed at Rs 50 lakh. Another agency bagged the contract for Rs 60 lakh.

It is alleged that the owner of the previous agency and the new one, which got the new contract, is the same. In spite of the corporation’s agreement with the earlier company, it did not get a single rupee towards revenue through hoardings in the past four years. Thus, the corporation terminated the contract and cancelled the licence.

“The civic body authorised me to take appropriate steps to collect the revenue. We had announced to demolish illegal and unauthorised hoardings through public address systems on Saturday night. We started removing the hoardings yesterday,” said the commissioner.

He said big hoardings, which had been mushrooming along the footpaths, were causing traffic problems in the city and residents had been urging the district administration to take corrective measures. Also, most of these hoardings were in a precarious position.

“During the next phase, we will take action against those who have put up hoardings on private buildings. The building owners must get a safety certificate before allowing such hoardings to be displayed. Or else, we will demolish the hoardings and take no responsibility for any damage to the buildings,” he said.