HC says, political leaders should ask their followers not to put up illegal hoardings

The division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Makarand Karnik, while hearing a bunch of petitions which included public interest litigations and contempt petitions sought to know from the state as to whether any measures were put in place to curb the habit of putting up unauthorised hoardings

Mumbai: The Bombay high court (HC) on Thursday sought details from the state and BMC on whether there were any permissible areas identified by the authorities for putting up hoardings and questioned as to why such lists were not made available to the police, so that there was a stop on putting up of illegal hoardings.

The court then asked the state to furnish it details of the system it planned to put in place against the unauthorised hoardings and adjourned the hearing of the petitions. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

The court also reiterated its query on whether political leaders would ask their followers and supporters to desist from putting up unauthorised hoardings and posters in the city and the state.

The division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Makarand Karnik, while hearing a bunch of petitions which included public interest litigations and contempt petitions sought to know from the state as to whether any measures were put in place to curb the habit of putting up unauthorised hoardings.

Additional government pleader Bhupesh Samant informed the bench that a procedure was in place whereby the authorities took action against the hoardings which were put up unauthorisedly. He submitted that the police were empowered to take suitable action against people putting up all such hoardings.

However, the bench sought to know whether there was a system in place by which the police could take action on their own against such illegal hoardings and banners.

The bench was told that the civic authorities maintained a list of authorised and licensed hoardings and whenever a hoarding was found it was verified from the list and if it was not on the list, it was pulled down and action was initiated against the perpetrators.

After hearing the submissions, the bench questioned as to why the civic authorities were not providing the list before hand to the police so that immediate action could be taken and unnecessary wastage of time could be avoided. The bench also deemed it necessary that the civic authorities put a system in place by which the list of authorised hoardings was updated in real time for the benefit of the police as well as the public.

The court then asked the state to furnish it details of the system it planned to put in place against the unauthorised hoardings and adjourned the hearing of the petitions.