Bengaluru: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) gave an undertaking to the Karnataka High Court that it will remove all illegal hoardings and advertisements in the city in two months from Monday.
BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad gave the undertaking before Justice Dr Vineet Kothari on Monday. The HC had questioned BBMP for its poor performance in the collection of advertisement tax.
The annual advertisement charges along with the interest are equivalent to the penalty imposed, observed Justice Kothari. The Judge further reprimanded Prasad and asked his Assistant Revenue Officers (ARO) to go hard on the agencies that put up illegal hoardings. The court itself will monitor the tax collection from concerned ad agencies/individual hoardings every fortnight. Those who do not pay tax, they do not have business. You remove the illegal hoardings completely,” the judge said.
The HC further directed the BBMP to give a list of pending cases pertaining to advertisement tax before civil courts so as to enable it to ask the District Principal and Sessions Judge to transfer all those pending and newly instituted cases on such issues to one designated court.
