Plans to install 60 unipoles, 7 gantries remain on paper Charanjit Singh Teja Amritsar, July 20 Despite the approval of Finance and Contract Committee (F&CC) to extend the number of unipoles, the officials concerned have failed to instal unipoles and gantries in the city. The Municipal Corporation (MC) collects a revenue of more than Rs 8 crore annually from 200 advertisement unipoles in the city. There is a huge potential of generating more revenue, but the officials concerned are not keen to explore the possibilities. In an F&CC meeting in December last year, Mayor Bakshi Ram Arora and the then MC Commissioner Sonali Giri gave the approval to instal 60 unipoles and eight gantries. But tenders have not been floated till date. The officials of the advertisement wing claim that the MC is only body in the state to have implemented the advertisement policy of the Punjab government. The state Cabinet had approved the Punjab Municipal Outdoor Advertisement Policy in April 2015. After subletting the 200 unipoles in 2015, the MC has started getting Rs 8 crore per annum as revenue. Earlier, the revenue from the advertisement wing was in lakhs. The MC had floated tenders for 220 unipoles, 18 gantry billboards (a two-sided board fixed to an overhead structure) and around 100 pillars designated for installing advertisements in various parts of the city in 2015. After the successful bid of 200 unipoles, the advertisement wing searched 50 more locations to instal the unipoles to increase the revenue. Even after passing the proposal, the MC has failed to proceed. Sher Singh, Superintendent, Advertisements, MC, said, “The city has a huge potential of revenue generation through advertisements. The delay in tendering is due to some problems.”

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