Urban News

Though the Civic body will maintain the heat persistently on the illegal hoardings, it has now decided to widen the drive to include all telecom companies that have set up their communication towers within the BMC jurisdiction. There is also a hint that the civic body is studying various ways adopted by other States to mop up more revenue from the existing resource base.

“The BMC is now losing crores as its revenue from the growing market of telecom tower business. It has come to our notice that most of the telecom towers (out of 279) installed in the city jurisdiction don’t have the occupancy certificates, which is mandatory under the provisions governing the telecom towers permission statute,” said Rina Mohapatra, Project Officer, BMC.

“So far we haven’t applied our mind in adopting any other State’s (Karnataka) revenue generation model of levying taxes on telecom towers installed here,” she said  “We are only adopting the Vizag civic model to augment more revenue from the trade licences”, she added.

The BMC has decided to give them three months time to produce the occupancy certificates during annual renewal exercise to obtain the NOC (no objection certificate) from the Corporation. If they fail to do so, the BMC will order for its seizure, added the PO.

Moreover, to tighten the noose against all illegal hoardings, the BMC will take the help of Global Positioning System (GPS) to eliminate the scope of corruption.

“Currently, taking advantage of shortage of manpower and by greasing the palms of some officials, many agencies have put up hoardings illegally on the Government lands. The GPS system will render this modus operandi ineffective,” said Rina.

She said the guidelines are clear. So, the violation is not because of any lacunae in the regulation but because of the laxity in its implementation.