Statesman News Service
MALDA, June 6: The Chairman of English Bazaar Municipality (EBM) Mr N Tiwari said today that Municipality would restrict indiscriminate installation of mobile tower following the objection from the local residents. The decision was taken following an order from the state environment department. The principal secretary of the state environment department recently urged local authorities to follow the guidelines before giving permission for installation of mobile phone towers on residential buildings, schools, hostels and hospitals in the districts which have a harmful electromagnetic radiation and children and patients are more susceptible to electromagnetic field. The chairman of the EBM admitted that mobile service providers had installed several Base Station Antennas in this town without seeking permission from the municipality. “We could not restrict indiscriminate installation of BSA earlier. Without fitness certificate of a building and permission from the civic body BSA was installed directly by the mobile phone providers including BSNL here due to lack of our monitoring”, Mr Tiwari disclosed. According to him, the building owners, where BSA has been installed, will have to pay commercial tax of their building but many of them are evading commercial taxes. “We will prepare a list of those buildings to demand commercial taxes from them. We had imposed restriction for installation of mobile towers following the order of the district when the Malda airport authority objected to installation of tower close to the airport”, the chairman said. But the environment department has instructed to impose restriction on them and recently local people have also lodged complaints against mobile service providers here, he said. Locals have already lodged complaints against some building owners and mobile service providers with the EMB and district environment department. A few local residents have been able to prevent them from installation of BSA close to their building and schools in English Bazaar town. “On the basis of protests from local people we must take action against mobile phone service providers to stop installation”, the chairman said.
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