The Times of India Nagpur 02.09.2016
Charges for erecting pandals hiked substantially, NMC to HC
Nagpur: In some bad news for Ganesh mandals, Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), on Thursday, informed the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court that it had already proposed hike in charges for erecting pandals during Maharashtra‘s biggest festival. NMC
counsel Sudhir Puranik informed HC that the proposal on increasing
charges had been forwarded to the Standing Committee, where it is
pending.
The civic body’s reply came in response to the court’s directives at
the last hearing, where it asked the standing panel to take a decision
on revising the fees or charges for grant of permissions to the pandals,
welcome arches/gates, flexes, banners, hoardings and stages, before the
forthcoming festival season, beginning from Monday.
Earlier, Puranik said the corporation would be charging Rs2,500 for a
pandal on less than 300 sq m area, Rs5,000 for structure below 500 sq m
and Rs10,000 above this size. He added over thousand application forms
for erecting pandals and other structures in various areas of 10 zones
had been sold from NMC’s single window counter, while about 500 had
submitted them with necessary documents. Of these, only 13 mandals were
granted no-objection certificate (NOC) so far while four were rejected
since their pandals were coming up on main roads.
At the last hearing, the court had allowed pandals on internal roads
only, which is a deviation from its earlier orders of September 16,
2009, February 2, March 11 and 27 last year. Surprisingly, it also
allowed arches on main roads, after initially prohibiting them, but with
a rider that it would not cause any obstruction to free flow of
traffic. The twist came after NMC submitted a comprehensive policy to
tackle the menace of pandals, welcome arches/gates, flexes, banners,
hoardings and stages on roads.
Expressing concern over inconvenience to citizens and obstructions to
traffic, the judges said that appropriate fees and penalties should be
charged, so that permissions are not sought in a routine and casual
manner.
After repeatedly facing the judiciary’s flak, NMC came out with a
‘Policy to grant permission for erection of temporary structures like
pandals, welcome arches/gates, flexes, banners, hoardings and stages, on
public streets/ roads/ footpaths/ footways, on occasion of festivals
and ceremonies’. It also informed that it had started two helplines
numbers (0712-2532474 and 1800-233-3764 (toll free)) for citizens to
lodge a complaint if any such structures were causing hindrance to
traffic or inconvenience to them.
