The Times of India            28.12.2013 

Laser device to end KMC-hoarding agency tussle

KOLKATA: Hoarding agencies can no longer train their guns on the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) for charging them "irrationally" for "errant billboards". Armed with a hi-tech laser instrument, the advertisement department of the civic body can now hit back at the book agencies and book them for violating norms.

It is learnt that the agencies often put up boards bigger than the size they had agreed on with the KMC. Civic officials often cracked down on these illegal hoardings but could do little as they were not equipped to measure the exact size of these huge billboards. Most of the time they had to return without being able to punish the offenders. But now, the officials can measure the size with the help of the new instrument. Laser rays emitted from it can reach up to 650 metre and read the space being occupied by a billboard, either on the street or atop a private or commercial building, said a civic official who has been trained to take stock of the billboards under the new measurement rules.

"With the kind of instrument we have now, we can actually determine the amount of space being grabbed by errant agencies. It is due to this malpractice that the city skyline gets cluttered," Debasis Kumar, mayor-in-council member overseeing the KMC advertisement said on Friday.

A civic team led by Kumar conducted raids in the city's prime areas in last few days and found several hoardings occupying more space than were allotted by the KMC. For example, a hoarding on Lindsay Street put up by one of the reputable agencies occupied 350 square feet though the agency was allotted only 200 sq ft area.

Similarly, the KMC advertisement department has detected large-scale anomalies in display of hoardings in areas like Behala, Tollygunge, Jadavpur and Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. "After display of billboards in central Kolkata was banned by the state government on instruction of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the agencies have shifted their focus on these areas from where they are collecting huge money by occupying more space than they were allotted. As a result, the civic body is losing on its share of revenue," said a senior KMC advertisement department official.