Agra civic body embattled with issue of mushrooming of unauthorised outdoor media

Mushrooming of unauthorised outdoor media is causing significant revenue loss to the Agra Municipal Corporation and squeezing the margins of media owners dealing with authorised media. The civic body had launched a drive to remove unuthorised hoardings in the city, but industry sources suggest that 45% of the hoardings up in the city are unauthorised. That would add up to some Rs 4 crore annual revenue loss to the municipal corporation.

On this matter, Amerish Nath, Proprietor, Frank Advertisers, said, “Definitely the corporation has been taking the required steps to bring down illegal hoardings but small vendors keep erecting sites for small duration campaigns without paying any taxes and license fee. That is causing business loss to the industry and degrading the business practices by selling out sites at rates that are unviable for players owning legal media.”

“Hundreds of illegal hoardings have been removed in different parts of the city. The work pace will be increased in the coming days to produce the desired results. We will ensure suitable compliance of state government orders, but it will take some time,” said Agra Municipal Corporation executive engineer Sanjeev Pradhan.

The corporation and vendors have been taking conscious steps by identifying unauthorised sites, so that they may be brought down.