Coimbatore Corporation has started removing the digital advertisement boards that had come up at a few places in the city. The civic body’s decision to remove the boards follows Corporation Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan’s proceedings of January 30, 2019, wherein he states that the Corporation will remove the boards because the contractor has violated a few conditions.
The agreement the Corporation had concluded with the contractor on February 15, 2018 for erection of 30 digital display boards stands cancelled as the contractor has violated agreement conditions, one of which is that the boards should comply with the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Licensing of Hoardings and Levy and Collection of Advertisement Tax Rules.
The other violation that Mr. Vijayakarthikeyan’s proceedings talks about is nonconformity to an order of the Madras High Court of October 30, 2017.
Officials familiar with the developments said that of the 30 boards that the Corporation had permitted the contractor to erect, the latter had installed six and of those the civic body had removed three.
The officials also said that the developments were based on Coimbatore Consumer Cause Secretary K. Kathirmathiyon's letter to senior State Government officials pointing out the violation.
Illegal hoardings
As a consequence, the Corporation had also started removing illegal hoardings and on Friday removed over 1,400 such hoardings on Sathyamangalam Road, Trichy Road, NSR Road and a few other places.
The hoardings were illegal because the permission the Coimbatore Collector had given had lapsed in October 2018.
Mr. Kathirmathiyon said that the issue with the digital display boards was that they were in violation of various State Government orders, court rulings and Indian Road Congress norms. The point to be noted here was that the Corporation should not have entered into a contract with the contractor concerned as it was fully aware that such erection of boards would be illegal.
The other flaw in the Corporation’s action was that it had entered into the agreement even before the Coimbatore Collector could accord permission for erection of those boards.
There were a few more boards that were in violation of the rules and he hoped that the Corporation would act on those at once, the consumer activist added.