Mumbai/Pune:
After a day long drive to remove illegal hoardings from the streets of Mumbai, finally Mumbaikars will not have beaming politicians smiling at them from each and every corner of the city's streets, at least for a few days. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), on Thursday, removed all illegal hoardings.
The Bombay High Court had directed the civic bodies across Maharashtra to remove all illegal hoardings within a day, failing which Municipal Commissioners would face action.
The drive was carried out in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur amongst other cities today.
In Pune, almost 3600 illegal hoardings were removed. Additional staff equipped with extra machinery was pressed into service from early morning in the fifteen wards. Officials of the Pune Municipal Corporation were also allegedly manhandled by some men of a hoarding company. They filed a police complaint. Later, a cross complaint was also filed by the hoarding company, alleging that the civic authority staff manhandled them first.
In Nagpur, a similar petition was filed in 2005 following which similar drives were conducted. But the hoardings reappeared soon.
Mumbai Mayor Sunil Prabhu told NDTV, "This would have happened earlier. But now the high court has said, so the political parties have to keep Mumbai clean and green."
However, all politicians are not the same. BJP's Vyomesh Panchmatia, a politician from Mumbai's Matunga area, removed from the streets his posters that were put up for his birthday. And this was after a complaint with the BMC didn't work.
"Why not use modern day tools like Facebook and Twitter to promote yourself? Do not deface the city's walls," he tells NDTV.
Activist Anil Joseph, who has consistently campaigned to ensure his area is free of posters much before the high court order, says, "I used to get angry seeing these guys smiling at me when I walked out of my house. I tore down many posters myself. They could not do anything to me. They don't fear me but they fear the votes in my area."