Cuttack, March 14: The municipal corporation is struggling to curb the menace of kalyan mandaps (marriage venues) that are operating in an unauthorised manner in various parts of the city.

Though the Cuttack Municipal Corporation through notices had asked mandap owners to undergo a mandatory registration process, only 70 mandaps out of 180 have applied for the renewals.

The civic officials, however, are upbeat since they claim that there has been a huge impact after notices were served for the mandatory registration process. They claim that the mandap owners had earlier not been interested in going through the renewal process.

According to official records, only three kalyan mandaps had applied for licence renewal in 2014-15, while already 70 owners have applied this year. The civic body have also decided to serve notices on the mandap owners, who are yet to comply with the registration process, or face closure within a stipulated time.

"We have submitted a list of kalyan mandaps that had not applied for licence or had submitted their building approval plans for appropriate action," said civic body commissioner Gyana Das.

The corporation is losing revenue since most of the kalyan mandaps are operating on residential plots and making profits when such public utilities need to be treated as commercial entities. An official said an emergency meeting had been convened to chalk out modalities and strategies to crackdown on illegal kalyan mandaps. The timeframe for completing fresh registration process will also be fixed at the meeting, to be held later this week.

Earlier, a high-level committee consisting of officials of the civic body, Cuttack Development Authority and the police was formed to conduct a physical verification of the existing mandaps. It was conducted following Orissa High Court orders over public inconvenience caused to residents and traffic due to lack of adequate parking provisions at such venues.

Over 60 per cent mandaps lack basic facilities such as adequate parking provisions, proper solid waste management and fire safety measures. "We had conducted a field inspection and submitted a report on the existing facilities and deficiencies in each of the mandaps. Action will be taken against the defaulters in accordance with the court's direction," said deputy commissioner Sanjeev Arora.