City teeming with ‘illegal’ towers

Aug 18, 2013 |

Age Correspondent

mumbai

A recent survey carried out by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has concluded that out of 4,776 mobile towers in Mumbai, as many as 3,631 have been erected without the municipality’s permission. The BMC has now termed all these towers as illegal.
According to the survey published earlier this month, the highest number of “illegal” mobile towers are in Borivali (342). Malabar Hill and Bandra, with 333 and 300 illegal mobile towers respectively, are second and third in the list.
However, the BMC cannot take any action against these towers even though they have been deemed illegal by the civic body. “The Bombay high court has granted a stay on removal of any of these towers after telecom companies filed a writ petition against the BMC’s notice to these towers. The case is still pending in the high court. Without having the stay vacated, it will not be possible to take any action against these illegal towers,” said a BMC official.
The BMC had also sent a draft policy on mobile towers for the approval of state urban development department about a year ago. As per the policy, a minimum distance of 36 metres should be maintained while installing mobile phone towers on educational institutions and hospitals. The policy also puts a cap on maximum of two towers a building. “There was no response from the UD department for a year. Now, with the new DoT
guidelines, we even might have to amend the draft policy,” the BMC official said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/250929" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-6aa7cb7b3423012826249ec09a0b013d" value="form-6aa7cb7b3423012826249ec09a0b013d" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="93121818" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>