more-in The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to remove metal structures put up illegally by the property owners and advertisement agencies for displaying advertisements, by vacating its September 6 interim order in which the BBMP was asked not to precipitate the issue by taking any adverse action. Justice Vineet Kothari, in his order on Tuesday vacated the September 6 interim order, and said that the petitions filed by Pacific Advertising and others, who have questioned BBMP’s decision to remove all such structures terming them as illegal, would be taken up for hearing after the division bench, which is hearing three PIL petitions and monitoring the BBMP’s action of removing all illegal advertisement hoardings and their structures, disposes the PIL petitions. “You [advertisement agencies] have created the mess and you have to pay the price for this,” the court observed while refusing to stay the actions initiated by the BBMP for removing illegal structures. The petitioner-advertisement agencies had questioned the August 6 resolution passed by the BBMP imposing a one-year ban on outdoor advertisement as well as the August 27 order passed by the jurisdictional officers rejecting their claim that hoardings and the metal structures were put up by them were ‘legal’. The petitioner-agencies had also claimed that the BBMP could not have totally banned outdoor advertisements contrary to the advertisement by-law-2016, which imposed restrictions on putting up hoardings in selected zones. The jurisdictional officers had passed the order on the responses submitted by petitioner-advertisement agencies / property owners to the public notice issued by the BBMP asking property owners and advertisement agencies to submit documents to prove that the advertisement hoardings and structures were put up by obtaining necessary permission from the BBMP. The BBMP has claimed that no advertisement hoarding is legal as the civic body had not issued any licence since 2016.

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