Special drive for dismantling of political hoardings in Kolkata

KOLKATA: The Election Commission has directed the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to join hands with the Kolkata Police and undertake a special drive for dismantling of all political hoardings from entire north Kolkata. A task force was formed on Friday comprising officials of the KMC and KP. It was decided that the task force would start its drive on Saturday evening.

The force was formed following a directive from the EC to dismantle all political billboards from the length and breadth of north Kolkata. A KP team on Friday faced resistance from a section of Trinamool Congress activists at Amherst Street when the team started pulling dowm some billboards having the image of the party chief embossed on those. In a separate event, a KMC team of officials had to face the Congress ire when they went to the Pradesh Congress office to pull down hoardings outside the PCC office. The KMC formed special teams three weeks ago for pulling down political billboards from across the city. The drive was going smooth till the civic top brass got into an argument with the EC as who would bear the expenses of pulling down thousands of political hoardings from government land and buildings.

The KMC decided to put a brake on the drive early this week till the dispute was resolved. The drive was resumed on Friday. The civic team on Saturday visited many areas in north Kolkata which include Bowbazar, Chittaranjan Avenue, Bidhan Sarani, Cossipore among other areas.