Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Thursday rejected a proposal forwarded by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to erect about 1,500 billboards carrying pictures of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, reports said Thursday.
While scrapping the proposal, the PMO, as per reports, made it clear that no ministry can use pictures of Prime Minister and UPA chairperson without permission.
The PMO’s direction has come as a setback for NHAI, which had even issued a circular 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 NHAI had plans to raise a total of 1,488 such billboards every 25 kilometres on the national highways. A maximum of 282 will be 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 NHAI had proposed to put 70 billboards in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and 58 in Assam and other North-east States.
The display boards were to be erected by the concessionaires and thereby sparing NHAI from incurring any expenditure on this account.
However, this proposal was challenged by an RTI applicant Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who said in its petition that photo-publicity of political rulers and other living personalities including through media-advertisements at public-expense should be altogether banned to prevent misuse of public-money for image-projection of leaders for political purposes.
First Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010, 14:17