Cong alleges advt scandal in MC

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 20

Even as the Municipal Corporation elections could be two months away, the ruling Congress in the state has begun mounting pressure over various issues against the existing MC House led by the BJP.

Congress leaders have been claiming that the BJP Mayors in their two successive terms failed to ensure a good income from various sources and instead continued to oblige their ‘favourites’ — more so in terms of collection of advertisement tax.

Leader of Opposition Jagdish Raja has alleged that the MC had incurred a revenue loss of more than Rs 18 crore in the recent grant of advertisement rights. In a complaint to the top Local Bodies Department officials, he has said, “There has been a direct loss of at least Rs 16.5 crore in the e-tendering of the MC owing to wrong terms and conditions put up for the same.”

Having procured documents via RTI, Raja says, “The MC area was divided into five zones at the time of tendering, with 59 sites for 3x6m unipoles in the first zone, 31 in the second, 51 in the third, 91 in fourth and four in the fifth zone. Besides, 13 sites for gantries were also put up. Keeping the reserve price of Rs 15,000 per unit per month for a period of five years, the best sites of the city were confined to just one zone. Resultantly, only zone 1 received the bids for which the reserve price was Rs 5.31 crore. There has been no response for the remaining zones for which the collective reserve price was nearly Rs 16.5 crore.”

Raja said, “Had there been a right grouping of sites, the earning of the MC would have certainly gone up and the remaining zones would not have been rendered dead. Further, the highest bidder ‘Creative Designers’, was awarded the contract as it agreed to pay Rs 25,000 per unipole per month for five years at Rs 14.75 lakh per month. Even as the contract was awarded in July 2016, it was after a lapse of over 10 months that the MC officials began fetching revenue,” he said. Before that, two unipoles had already been erected- one in front of the Model Town main market and another opposite Geeta Mandir. This was much against the condition in the e-tendering that the first successful highest bidder shall submit the bank guarantee and deposit the first installment of the lease money within seven days from the date of allotment letter. The failure to fulfil this condition entailed forfeiture of earnest money deposited and blacklisting of the firm, but no action came.

Congress leaders alleged that this step further led to the monopolisation of advertisements. Raja, who is a lawyer by profession, alleges that the new company which got the best sites for advertisements has allegiance with Durga Advertisers, which in July 2006 had managed to get a roaring advertisement business in the city with a complete monopoly on all 199 unipoles for such a long period. The company was made to spend just Rs 18 crore for the construction of the DAV College flyover in lieu of the 11-year contract and was allowed to earn several hundreds of crores in the span in return.”

Violation of law

As per the Punjab Outdoor Advertisement Policy notified by the department on December 7, 2012, the owner of any commercial building can put up just one self-advertisement hoarding that too not bigger than the specified dimension of 2 sq m. In city, almost all commercial buildings have been putting up multiple hoardings of huge sizes covering their entire walls and façade of the building. The banks have been using their entire buildings for highlighting various schemes. The restaurants have the tendency of putting up hoardings and even putting pictures of food in their menu and schemes offered. The computer hardware shops and multi-brand showrooms are seen to have installed five to 10 hoardings on just one building of each brand available with them No action has ever come.

Opposition’s allegations

• Frequent changes in advertisement policies with adherence to none. 
• No check on monopolisation of advertisement work in the city. 
• Wrongful terms which led to no response for four out of five new advertisement zones. 
• 10-month delay in payment of earnest money. 
• All 59 allotted sites in the zone not taken, income came down further

Low recovery

The recovery of the advertisement tax has always remained extremely low than projected in the MC budget. For instance, in 2011-12, Rs 4 crore was targeted to be recovered by way of advertisement tax by the Jalandhar MC against which only Rs 8.44 lakh were collected. The same trend is on for the past five years.