N Chandrababu Naidu wants poster-free AP, roads tell a different tale

Vijayawada: Posters are returning to deface the walls of Vijayawada city. The government had declared Vijayawada a ‘poster-free city’ during Krishna Pushkaralu and the municipal corporation had decorated walls with paintings by involving students. Barely four months later, posters are appearing on the walls again, everywhere across the city. Interestingly, posters of the government with the CM’s photographs on them are cropping up on the walls.

These posters can also be seen right in front of the CM’s camp office on the compound wall of the office of the commissioner of the command area development. These government posters are everywhere in the city advertising various governmental schemes. Posters of YSRC leaders were also seen on Eluru Road wishing party president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on his birthday. Some of the posters were pasted on the entrance walls of the court complex, adjacent to the CM’s camp office.

Every junction box belonging to the BSNL is hidden by posters advertising part-time jobs, rentals, PAN card brokers. Bus stations in the city and electric poles except those on the Bandar Road are also seen ‘adorned’ by various kinds of posters. Movie posters were also seen every other wall in the city. A. Laxmi Annapurna of Margam Foundation, who had started the ‘poster-free Vijayawada’ campaign, said, “It takes 360 man hours to clean one place and it is spoilt in a matter of just a few seconds. Nearly 1000 volunteers of our organisation worked to make the city poster-free, and all the hard work they put in has now gone in vain.”  

The government has only announced Vijayawada poster-free but there was no implementation part, Mr Annapurna said, adding that the VMC commissioner “who literally chased us for our services during Pushkaralu, is not even responding to our calls or messages now.” City planner in the VMC, B. Srinivasulu said, “We have forwarded some seven cases to I-Town and II-Town police stations. We are not aware of what action the police took.”

Interestingly, the Chief Minister said in the collectors’ conference on Wednesday that all cities in the state should be made poster and flexi-free. He went on to say that the government would bring in legislation if required. The irony is that all the road dividers are filled with Chief Minister’s flexis in Vijayawada city.