R.I.P. posters

Verma,an upper division clerk with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi,heads the poster removal squad in the City Zone area that has eight wards that include Chandni Chowk,Nizamuddin,Jama Masjid and Minto Road. He says he is always on alert,looking for unauthorised banners,posters and hoardings that fall in the route between his home in Faridabad and his office near Lok Nayak hospital.

These posters could be of Manmohan Singh,Sonia Gandhi,L K Advani,Vajpayee8230;anyone,but we have to get them removed. Once I reach office,I inform my counterparts who act swiftly and get them removed. They usually disappear by the time I cross that way next morning, says Verma. So far,he says,their team has removed at least 20-30 hoardings in the area.

Once he gets to office,Vermas first job is to check with the control room at the MCD headquarters to see if there are complaints of illegal hoardings in his zone. Once he gets specific inputs,he sets off with his teama few other staff members and some labourersto dismantle banners and hoardings. They usually travel in an MCD truck or their car,but there are places like Chandni Chowk where our men cant go in cars and trucks so they remove hoardings and bring them back on rickshaws, he says.

Even if there are no specific complaints from the control room,Verma and his team go out on rounds to locations such as Chandni Chowk,New Delhi railway station,Nizamuddin,SPM Marg and Old Delhi railway station,congested areas where the law against illegal hoardings and banners is tougher to implement.

Earlier,political parties would rip off posters and bring down hoardings of their opponents. Now,they paste their posters on the existing ones. One night,I saw posters of the BJP candidate on a wall. I told my team members to remove them the next morning. But when our team reached the place,they found Congress workers pasting their posters on the BJP ones, says Verma,whose also represents MCD in courts in tehbazari street vends cases.

Verma says keeping public property clean calls for coordination among different agenciesother MCD agencies,police,Enforcement Department. We cant just reach a spot and take out posters stuck on walls. Sometimes the posters stuck on walls need to be made wet so that they come out easily. So we call in people from the MCDs sanitation department, he says.

Has he ever had run-ins with politicians? Politicians are stubborn. We remove a hoarding and the next day they put up a banner. We go to remove the banner and they paste a poster. But once we warn them and wave the Act at them,they usually stop, says Verma. We do our job without succumbing to pressure and political workers usually fall in line. When they dont,Verma seeks help from the local police station.

Politicians are now used to the rules,he says. Earlier,they would threaten us when we removed posters. Last year,the department had to go to the police with complaints and many candidates were named in FIRs. Now,they do not trouble us, says Verma,his room stuffed with broken furniture and rusted almirahs full of files.

Does Verma have informers in the area who tip him off every time a wall or pole gets defaced? Verma laughs. We dont need to employ informers. The system works well by itself. If,say,we remove posters of the BJP,they tell us the five other streets and houses where Congress politicians have posters and hoardings. That helps us, says Verma.