Civic body issues lesser challans for illegal hoarding in two years, reveals RTI

Times of India: Ludhiana: Monday, 09 March 2020.

Despite the fact that state government has notified the outdoor advertisement policy to curb illegal advertisement in cities, the civic body seems to be careless in implementing this policy. An application filed under RTI has revealed that officials hardly bothered to issue challans for the defaulters for displaying advertisement boards illegally at city roads as well as outside their shops/buildings. However the civic officials claimed that challans are issued on regular basis.

The RTI was filed by activist Rohit Sabharwal in which he had demanded number of challans issued zone wise by the civic officials from April 2018 till February 2020. The information provided under RTI revealed that handful of challans were issued in almost two years and surprisingly when there is no end to illegal advertisement in city. The maximum challans 8450 were issued by officials of zone D while minimum 1500 were filed by zone C officials.

The activist Sabharwal said, “When this policy was notified in the state it was clearly mentioned that nodal officer will be appointed for giving regular reports to the MC Commissioner that there is no illegal advertisement board in city and in case he or she fails to perform the duty then revenue loss should be recovered from salary of that officer." He said but nothing has been done by the officials and in some of the months the officials did not even bother to issue even a single challan whereas they have the powers to recover challans worth Rs 50,000 per repeated offender. He said he has raised this matter with chief secretary of state government and has demanded vigilance inquiry for taking action against those officers who are damaging the state exchequer.

However on the other hand the superintendent of advertisement (headquarters) in MC Harvinder Dhalla refuted the blames and said, “We are issuing regular challans to the defaulters wherever we find irregularities. In a few months there was dip in number of challans due to elections when we were to remove the hoardings and challans could not be issued.”