PMC to give NOC only after electoral aspirants pay fine for illegal hoardings

Ahead of the civic polls, the city is littered with illegal hoardings, mostly erected by aspiring candidates for birthday celebrations, social work related events, festival wishes and programmes aimed at reaching out to the electorate

Ahead of the civic polls, the city is littered with illegal hoardings, mostly erected by aspiring candidates for birthday celebrations, social work related events, festival wishes and programmes aimed at reaching out to the electorate. However, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has come up with a way to stop this menace.

An illegal hoarding at Gaymukh chowk, Narhe Ambegaon (Ravindra Joshi/HT PHOTO)

The PMC on Saturday announced that aspiring candidates who want to contest municipal corporation elections and want a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the civic body, will have to first pay fines between ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 for the unauthorised boards, flexes and banners they had erected across the city.

The PMC sky sign department has made a list of 2,000 violators and issued notices to them.

As per the rules, every candidate requires an NOC from the PMC before contesting election. If the fines are not paid, the PMC sky sign department will not give a clearance, and the NOC will be put on hold, said officials. The PMC administration has also handed over the list of violators to the property tax department as part of a double check measure to ensure that the candidates pay the penalty before obtaining their NOC from the said department.

Yashwant Mane, deputy commissioner of sky sign and permissions department said, “We have prepared a list of those who had erected unauthorised hoardings and notices have been issued in their name. All those who don’t pay, the said amount will be recovered from their property tax bills. Once their election application comes before us, we will ensure that they pay the dues and only then the NOC will be granted.”

Altaf Shaikh, an aspirant from All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) said, “We have put around 22 hoardings in various areas and have received a notice from the PMC. We will go to the court against this order and seek an injunction from there . Hoardings and flexes are social mediums of dissemination of social work related information and such curbs are uncalled and against the rules “

Penalty

₹5,000: Fine for up to 10 illegal hoardings erected by aspirants,after which each illegal hoarding will have a fine of ₹1,000

₹50,000: Fine on advertisers for erecting illegal hoardings

1,400: No. of illegal banners identified by Pune city police