CHENNAI: The city corporation has proposed to rope in a private agency for the enumeration and physical verification of hoardings in select areas in the city to identify unauthorised ones.
The survey and verification will be done on Thiruvottiyur High Road, Mount Road, Anna Nagar Second Avenue, Nelson Manickam Road, Valluvar Kottam High Road, 100 feet road, Arcot Road, Kaliamman Koil Street in Kodambakkam zone, Poonnamallee high road (from Koyambedu flyover to Maduravoyal), Velachery main road, OMR (from SRP tools till Pandian Salai), and ECR till Uthandi.
The agency, which will be selected after tenders are floated, will survey and photograph the hoardings, assign numbers, and submit a road-wise survey report along with the GPS coordinates to the city corporation.
In the council meeting held in July this year, multiple councillors said that the corporation should share a list of hoardings that have been placed with permissions so that they can single out unauthorised hoardings in their respective areas, and raise the issue with the corporation officials concerned to get them removed.
According to the Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act, the city corporation is the nodal agency to grant permission and licenses to hoardings. Applications for hoardings are reviewed by corporation authorities before arriving at a decision.
Previously, licence inspectors under the revenue department of the corporation would identify unauthorised hoardings, which would then be removed by the zonal engineers.
“This process will go on in other streets including interior streets. Wider and longer streets that are usually hot spots for hoardings, have been identified region-wise, and those will be handed over for enumeration to the private agency.”
Teynampet and Kodambakkam zones are particularly sought after by advertisers looking to put up hoardings, the official said. The city corporation conducted a special drive to remove unauthorised hoardings earlier this year where over 750 illegal hoardings were removed.