Patna Nagar Nigam uprooting outdoor media, plans fresh tenders

The Patna Nagar Nigam is swiftly rooting out all outdoor media in the city, having notified the industry about the move a month ago. Mushrooming of unauthorised media in the city had precipitated this official action. A media owner based in the city told Media4Growth that “the authority is removing entire outdoor media in the city – at all locations, across formats – whether illegal or legal”.

When Media4Growth approached the Patna Municipal Corporation enquiring about the matter, the Commissioner Abhishek Singh said, “We have received a direction from the Urban Development Ministry to get rid of the illegal media, built on public roads as well as private buildings which don’t fall under the guidelines of 2012 Outdoor Advertising Policy of the city. The biggest reason behind this drive is to cut out the clutter that is spoiling the beautify of the city.”

As far as legal media is concerned, Singh clarified, “There are no legal media in the city. A few years ago, representatives of the media owners had presented us few site locations which were approved back then but only for a year. However, no permissions were taken again by them and the license for all those sites had lapsed”.

The corporation’s vision is to make the city aesthetically beautiful. “In the wake of Smart City development, we also have to come up to the standards of metro cities and showcase the beauty of the city and present it in a proper manner. In cities like Delhi and Mumbai the outdoor formats have proper locations allotted with sizes and structures pre-decided by their respective authorities. We are also looking to adopt such a model,” he said.

Does it mean no OOH in Patna? “We are not against outdoor advertising and we are not banning it entirely. Our objective is to create a perfect balance between beautification of the city and branding and promotion. Keeping this in mind, we will be re-tendering the hoardings after selecting roads, locations, size of structures and for private building we will issue hoarding numbers and license,” said Singh.