Corporate
TT Correspondent | 04 Jun 2018Around 5,000 mobile towers have been set up in the city without the requisite permission from the MCG.
In a letter to the companies responsible for installing and running these towers last week, the planning division of the corporation gave them two weeks’ time to report to the MCG with details of their towers, and another two months’ time to get the towers regularised under the latest policy.
A senior MCG official said “An internal survey has revealed that most of the mobile towers operating within the jurisdiction of the MCG don’t have the required permissions under the latest mobile tower policy”.
The towers which are not regularised within the next two months will be sealed by the corporation, he added. There are 161 legally-installed mobile towers in the city.
For every mobile tower installed within its boundaries, MCG should get a fee of Rs 1 lakh. Due to the 5,000-odd mobile towers running without permission, MCG is facing a loss of Rs 50 crore, officials said.
According to the latest telecom infrastructure policy, which was introduced in 2017, the deputy commissioner’s (DC) office is the single point of contact for getting approvals for the installation of mobile towers. Consequently, deputy commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh is the competent authority to approve applications for installation of mobile towers, depending on the report of the concerned department — in this case, the MCG. Hence, the MCG has also written to the DC office.
DC Singh had earlier told TOI that no mobile tower has been approved since the launch of this policy.