Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has admitted that around 50 per cent mobile towers across the city are illegal.
"50 per cent mobile towers in the city are illegal. However, we have no locus-standi to act against the telecom towers for the excessive amount of radiation from them," BMC Commissioner Sitaram Kunte said during a meeting with Congress MP Priya Dutt alongwith the corporators from her party here yesterday.
The BMC had earlier carried out a drive to demolish the illegal mobile towers. However, the telecom companies approached the court, which gave a stay.
"If the court vacates the stay, we will once again carry out the demolition drive," Kunte added.
He said BMC was not the authority where people could complain about excessive radiation from these towers.
"There is a suspicion that mobile towers cause radiation. But there is no medical evidence that it causes cancer," Kunte said.
He said that the civic body would incorporate the revised guidelines issued by the Department of Telecommunication (DOT) in the civic body`s mobile towers policy. "We are yet to send the policy on mobile towers to the civic standing committee," he added.
BMC corpoators had earlier suggested that strict action should be taken against the telecom operators for illegal mobile towers.
Residents of Jai Ganesh Society in Vile Parle complained that due to a large number of mobile towers opposite their building, they were suffering from health hazards like nausea, headache as well as from cancer.
"In a housing society opposite to ours there are as many as 16 mobile towers. We held talks with the society members about the health hazards. There were two cancer cases because of these towers," B L Thakkar, a resident said.
He said as per the guidelines issued by the DoT, minimum distance between the two mobile towers has to be 20 meters.
Whereas, here the distance is less than 15 meters," he said.
PTI
