The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Hoardings: eye candy or potential danger?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Hoardings: eye candy or potential danger?

Karthik Subramanian

Residents left horrified by sight of precariously hanging billboards after the thunderstorms on Sunday night

Gale force winds: A billboard which fell on cars parked at a cinema hall on EVR Periyar High Road after a squall on Sunday.

CHENNAI:

Residents who watched the trail of destruction on the city's roads on Monday morning were left horrified by the sight of several precariously hanging hoardings. Many were asking the question: what if the thunderstorms had struck during the daytime?

At least two-dozen hoardings in the city either crashed or were hanging precariously following the thunderstorms past Sunday midnight. Chennai has become a city of advertisement hoardings over the past few years with the structures eating into the cityscape. Even by conservative estimates, the number of hoardings in the city today could be well over 5,000 with new ones mushrooming all the time.

The Supreme Court had given a directive in 2001 to maintain the status quo on the number of hoardings within the city limits till the Government took up licensing of the hoardings industry. The city had about 3,500 hoardings then.

When the State Government last took up the issue of streamlining the multi-crore hoardings industry in 2001, the Chennai Corporation was officially in charge of collecting applications and issuing licences.

The civic agency received 3,609 applications till June 15, 2001 but, upon the instructions of the State Government, deferred the issue of licensing.

They may be interesting roadside distractions for some but their condition raises questions as to how safe hoardings are. — Photo: K. Pichumani & N. Sridharan

In 2003, after several sections of the media highlighted the issue of several illegal hoardings mushrooming in every nook and corner of the city, the State Government, through a notification, transferred the licensing powers for hoardings from the Chennai Corporation to the Chennai Collectorate.

Strict rules

The Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Licensing of Hoardings and Levy and Collection of Advertisement Tax Rules, 2003 stipulated strict guidelines that restricted the maximum size of hoardings to 24 feet by 12 feet and prevented hoardings on both sides of the roads that had footpaths less than ten feet wide.

The hoarding owners, meanwhile, moved the Madras High Court against the new rules and obtained a stay against enforcing the new rules.

One of the petitioners in the case, Tamil Nadu Outdoor Advertising Association, has since complained to the Chennai Collectorate that several hoardings had come up in the city, some of which were hurriedly put up by fly-by-night operators.

It is not clear how many of the hoardings even have the mandatory structural stability certificates.

Chennai Collectorate officials, on Monday, said they were verifying whether the hoardings that gave way during the Sunday midnight thunderstorms were listed in the original list of hoardings in 2001. "If they are not present in the list, they will not be allowed to be put up again," a senior official said.

The last time the Chennai Collectorate talked tough over illegal hoardings was when a hoarding opposite Ripon Buildings, the Chennai Corporation headquarters, crashed on a car last June, injuring the vehicle's driver. In September last year, a giant hoarding collapsed dangerously close to the Judges' Quarters in Adyar.

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