SDMC to survey all cellphone towers in its area

New Delhi: Concerned about mobile network service providers operating cellphone towers in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) area without paying a licence fee, the civic body has asked officials to furnish a list of such installations.

HT Image

SDMC’s standing committee chairperson Bhupender Gupta said the additional commissioner concerned must carry out a “ward-wise survey of all cellphone towers in south Delhi and submit a report after four weeks”. The issue was discussed in the standing committee meeting Tuesday.

A senior official, who did not wish to be named, said, “As per our assessment, there are 4,740 cellphone towers in our area and 2,074 have permission hand have paid the licence fee. Some of the remaining 2,666 tower operators have applied for permission and we are in the process of verifying their papers.”

“Since we have very few junior engineers, who also have to check buildings and were recently busy with election duty, the work of visiting each cellphone tower for verification is taking time. Still, in the past seven months, we have earned ₹3.14 crore from regularising these towers,” he said.

“We are trying to raise our revenue from all possible sources and cellphone towers are one of them,” Gupta said.