Thiruvananthapuram corporation set to clear illegal hoardings

Thiruvanathapuram: The Corporation will be sending out notices to everyone who has put up hoardings without the prior sanction of the civic body. As it conducted the first of its many drives to clear the city of illegal hoardings, Mayor V K Prasanth said, “This time we will initiate legal action against everyone who has not taken our permission to put up hoardings. Earlier we used to only remove the hoardings. Now a notice will be issued, and they will have to pay up a fine.”

On Monday, more than 120 hoardings were carted away in Corporation vehicles by Revenue Department officials. The road from LMS to East Fort was covered on the first day. The hoarding removal drive will continue for a week. Most of the hoardings were in Thampanoor area, according to Deputy Mayor Rakhi Ravikumar. “We have just started and the number of hoardings removed is more than 100. It will take at least two days to completely clear Thampanoor of the hoardings,” said the Finance Standing Committee Chairperson.

In many places, the hoardings posed a danger to pedestrians. Then there were hoardings for which the tax was not paid. A great majority of these belonged to political parties, according to Prasanth. Many of the hoardings announced events which got over months ago. The Health Standing Chairperson had earlier declared that flexboards would be banned. When asked about the move on Monday, he said he was not aware of it.