PUNE: The Licence and Sky Sign Department of the Pune Municipal Corporation has taken action against illegal advertisement hoardings, banners, flexes and posters from April to September and collected a fine of ₹9.59 lakh. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Madhav Jagtap said that after removing the unauthorised  hoardings, a fine of ₹50,000 is being collected from the concerned person.

During the period of five months from April to September, the Licence and Sky Sign Department removed 175 hoardings, 39,248 boards, 21,425 banners, 20,913 flexes, 7,779 flags, 44,285 posters, 19,092 kiosks and 9,802 other advertisements which makes a total of 1,62,719 unauthorised advertisements, boards, banners etc, said Jagtap.

If penalty is not paid by the advertiser, then the penalty is recovered from the owner of the concerned place. If premises owners do not pay the fine, then proceedings have also been initiated to include the fine amount in the property tax. The process of filing FIRs against the persons putting up unauthorised advertisements is also going on and complaints have been made to the police stations at 52 places. So far, six FIRs have been registered.

In a survey conducted by the PMC, 2,000 new unauthorised advertisement hoardings have been found. Notices have been issued to all these advertisers to legalise the advertisement hoardings. Since there is no positive response from them, action is being taken against them.

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