Despite HC order to pull down illegal hoardings, banners from across city, and take action against those behind them, civic body's own headquarters are plastered with illegal posters
The BMC, it seems, can’t even keep its own house clean. Illegal hoardings and banners an exercise in self-promotion by political parties had become such an eyesore last year that the Bombay High Court had to intervene and ask the BMC not just to take them down but also take action against those putting up the hoardings.
Also read: BMC promises to make Mumbai banner-free in 3 days
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These posters greet anyone who enters the civic body headquarters
Now, more than a year after the HC ruling, mid-day has found that not only has the BMC failed to eradicate the menace from the city’s streets, it hasn’t even been able to do so in its own headquarters.
The Akhil Bhartiya Sena’s Geeta Gawli, who is the chairman of the health committee, has plastered the walls of the BMC’s headquarters in Fort with illegal posters. So much so, that her face, along with that of her jailed father Arun Gawli, is the first thing you see when you enter the building.
Should you miss the poster the first time, Gawli has ensured that it greets you on either side of the lifts, and even on the walls along the staircases, for the more health conscious. Walk around the lobby, the corridors, pretty much anywhere, and you’re sure to find the smiling, serene faces of the Gawlis looking down on you.
And Gawli is not alone. Several posters bearing the BMC insignia have been put up around the building without the necessary permissions from the civic body.
BMC speak
When mid-day brought the issue to the notice of Sharad Bande, licence superintendent at the BMC, he said his department hadn’t issued any licences for posters being pasted on the building’s walls.
Geeta and Arun Gawli’s smiling faces greet you almost everywhere you go in the BMC headquarters
“If there are posters inside the BMC building, the maintenance department is responsible for them. You’ll need to check with them on how the posters are there inside the building. This doesn’t come under my department.”
Posters plastered near the elevators
Additional Municipal Commissioner Mohan Adtani, however, promised stringent action. “The posters for which permissions have been taken will stay and the others will be taken down immediately. An FIR will be registered against those whose names are there on the posters defacing the building.”
BMC officials themselves conceded that it was odd that no action had been taken against the illegal posters so far, despite them being in areas where they would be seen by officials of the stature of the municipal commissioner and even the mayor.
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