New Delhi: The National Highway Authority
of India will remove billboards carrying photographs of Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi
along the highway network following objection from PMO.
The authority, in its letter dated February 26 to the
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has "proposed not to
provide display boards with photographs of Prime Minister and
Chairperson UPA in view of letter from PMO wherein it has
directed not to use the photographs of Prime Minister without
specific approval from Prime Minister's Office (PMO)."
"The display boards already erected will either be
removed or the photographs of Prime Minister and Chairperson
of UPA will be replaced with the photographs of project
highways or facilities," the NHAI said in a reply to an RTI
query.
The authority in its reply to activist S C Agrawal
said it has not made any request to Sonia Gandhi for using her
photographs on the display boards.
Earlier, the authority had planned to erect about
1,500 billboards with pictures of Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi every 25 kilometres on
the national highways.
A circular was issued to all its Project Directors
regarding provision of display boards at 25 km interval on
both sides alternatively in English, Hindi and the local
language.
The PMO has issued instructions to all Ministries to
take its prior approval before using the Prime Minister's
photographs.
In response to an earlier RTI query from Agrawal, the
NHAI had said out of the total of 1,488 such billboards, a
maximum of 282 were planned to be erected on national highways
in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, 249 in
Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana and 214 in Tamil Nadu and
Puducherry.
A total of 170 display boards were planned in Andhra
Pradesh, 126 in Maharashtra and Goa, 120 in Delhi, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, 108 in West Bengal and Orissa and 91
in Karnataka and Kerala.
While 70 billboards were proposed to be put up in
Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and 58 in Assam
and other north-east states.
The display boards are to be provided at the cost of
the contractor or concessionaire and NHAI will not incur any
expenditure on this account, the reply said.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, April 01, 2010, 17:23