Bengaluru OOH staring at likely policy paralysis

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which planned to adopt an advertising policy on the lines of the Delhi Advertisement Policy, is now working on a fresh draft as per the orders issued by the High Court of Karnataka. Industry sources have explained that the ad policy was apparently presented in a hurry, which the High Court did not appreciate. Instead, a deadline of August 31 was given to BBMP to come up with the policy.

Few media owners when contacted by Media4Growth in Bengaluru see no rationale in BBMP going for an entirely new ad policy considering that the ad policy was amended in 2016 in keeping with the market conditions.

There is not much optimism on how a new ad policy will be adopted in a short span of time. Also, there are fears expressed that the industry will lose some 4-5 months of business if the current situation persists. First, the policy will go to the councils for approval after which the BBMP Commissioner will have to submit the report to the state government. In the next step, the provision of suggestions will be kept open for feedback and the final implementation of the policy will likely taken another 90 days.