Title - Corporation nod compulsory for ads on railway premises

Firms that display hoardings and other advertisements in railway premises should obtain a licence from the Chennai Corporation, apart from the requisite permission and licence from rail authorities, the High Court has ruled.Justice D Hariparanthaman, who gave the ruling while dismissing a batch of writ petitions from Sri Ragavendra Ad Lab in Royapettah and four other companies, also imposed a cost of  `25,000 each on them, to be payable to the Corporation.According to the petitioners, they had been permitted by the Senior Divisional Commercial Manager of the Southern Railway to erect hoardings and advertisements in railway premises. However, the Corporation sought to regulate those hoardings by insisting that the petitioners also obtain licences from it. Otherwise, the hoardings and other advertisements would be removed, the firms were told.According to the petitioners, neither the Corporation nor the IT Express Way Limited, a Tamil Nadu government company, had the authority to regulate hoardings in railway premises.Rejecting the contentions, Justice Paranthaman stated that as per the newly-incorporated Section 326-A of the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act, hoardings are defined as the display of boards at any place, whether public or private to exhibit ads, visible to the public partly or in full.  This section empowered the Corporation to regulate these hoardings, he added. It did not exempt the hoardings put up on railway premises from the purview of Chapter XII-A of the Act.