Outdoor advertising permission India: who signs off

A hoarding is not a media buy with a structure attached. It is a use of public space, and in India the body controlling public space is the local one. There is no national outdoor advertising permission. There is a municipal corporation Act, a city policy under it, and a permit with a number on it.

The permission is municipal, and it runs city by city

Every major corporation Act carries its own prohibition. Section 328 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888 makes a sky sign unlawful without the written permission of the Municipal Commissioner, and section 328A does the same for an advertisement on any land, building, wall, hoarding, frame, post or structure, enforced through section 471. Sections 143 to 146 and 430 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 require the prior written permission of the Commissioner before any advertisement is displayed to public view. Pune, Nashik, Thane and Kolhapur sit under sections 244 and 245 of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, 1949. Bengaluru’s older bye-laws came under section 134 of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976.

On top of the Act, each city runs its own policy. Mumbai’s is the Policy Guidelines for Display of Outdoor Advertisements 2025, published by the corporation on 27 November 2025, superseding its earlier guidelines and framed under sections 328 and 328A. Delhi’s is the Outdoor Advertising Policy 2017, annexed to Report No. 74 of the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority and filed in Supreme Court writ petition W.P. (C) No. 13029 of 1985, M.C. Mehta v. Union of India. Two documents, eight years apart, from two different kinds of body. Almost nothing you learn from one transfers to the other.

Bengaluru is the warning. Commercial hoardings on public land were effectively stopped there for years, and new bye-laws were notified in 2024 to allow them back under conditions on road width and spacing. We could not confirm that notification’s gazette date, and even its enabling Act is reported differently by different sources. Treat a city position as current only when the local body’s own document says so.

Who is liable when the hoarding is unpermitted

The clearest statutory hook sits in the disfigurement statutes. Section 3 of the Karnataka Open Places (Prevention of Disfigurement) Act, 1981 punishes whoever, by himself or through another person, affixes or exhibits an advertisement in a place open to public view without the written permission of the local authority. Those words, through another person, reach past the contractor who climbed the ladder. The penalty is small, up to six months or a fine up to one thousand rupees. The cost is never the fine. It is removal and a dead campaign.

Mumbai’s policy goes further on paper. An unauthorised display is removed at the risk, cost and consequences of the agency or advertiser, and in case of any accident the advertiser shall be solely liable. Read that clause carefully before relying on it in either direction. The policy defines agency, permit, licence fees and ground rent. In the version we read it does not define advertiser, so how far it reaches a brand that only bought the space is a question of fact, not of definition.

Reported enforcement follows the chain, not the logo. After the May 2024 Mumbai collapse, Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation booked 24 landowners and 24 hoarding owners, with advertisers named alongside them. No brand was identified. We found no reported Indian case of a brand prosecuted purely because its name appeared on someone else’s unpermitted structure. That is not comfort. It means the exposure a brand can control is the contract, and the contract is written before the campaign.

The safety overlay is older than the last collapse

Courts have been on this for decades, across more than one forum. The Supreme Court has monitored outdoor hoardings in Delhi since 10 December 1997 in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, on road safety and visual clutter grounds, and that line of orders eventually produced the 2017 Delhi policy. The Bombay High Court, in Suswarajya Foundation v. Collector, Satara, decided 31 January 2017, directed the State and municipal authorities across Maharashtra on unlawful hoardings and banners, and was still hearing contempt petitions in October 2024. In June 2024 the Supreme Court directed Mumbai authorities and the Railways to prevent a collapse during the monsoon. Mumbai’s 2025 policy now carries a standard operating procedure for structural stability, with an engineer’s certificate required above stated size thresholds.

Highways, railways and metro answer elsewhere

A municipal permit does not cover land the municipality does not control.

• National highways. Section 24 of the Control of National Highways (Land and Traffic) Act, 2002 bars occupying highway land without prior written permission from the Highway Administration constituted under section 3. That Act’s definition of building expressly includes an advertisement board. We could not retrieve the current Ministry of Road Transport and Highways circular on roadside advertising, so confirm the right of way position with the Highway Administration in writing, not from a vendor’s summary.
• Railways. In Union of India v. Municipal Corporation for Greater Mumbai, decided 21 December 2017, the Bombay High Court held that sections 328 and 328A of the Mumbai Act, and the section 479 licence, do not apply to hoardings erected by the Railways on railway land, and that advertisement tax is not payable to a local authority absent a Central Government notification under section 185 of the Railways Act, 1989. The corporation’s appeal was pending in the Supreme Court as of June 2024.
• Metro. Section 29 of the Metro Railways (Operation and Maintenance) Act, 2002 gives a metro administration the right to display commercial advertisements on its own railway and premises, granted onward by licence. In Delhi the overlap was negotiated, not assumed: prior municipal permission was waived for the metro for the term of its revenue sharing memoranda with two corporations, while municipal approval stayed necessary for category 1 devices, including railway bridges, flyovers and foot over bridges.

Private gated residential property is a fourth regime, where the permission comes from the society and not the corporation, and society advertising in gated communities and rwa permission for a brand activation are dealt with separately.

What to demand before anything goes up

• The permit reference, the issuing body, and a copy. Not an assurance that the site is approved.
• The validity period and renewal date. Mumbai’s policy makes renewal the permit holder’s job and lets a permit cease three months after expiry.
• The site described the way the permission describes it, size and illumination included. A permit for one board is not a permit for a larger one.
• A current, dated structural stability certificate from a registered structural engineer, plus any traffic police no objection certificate where the site is illuminated or digital.
• Who removes the display on expiry, at whose cost, and who insures it.
• On railway, metro, highway or state road land, the grant from that authority and whatever municipal clearance its own arrangement still requires.
• In Delhi, that whoever displays on your behalf is a licensed or registered advertiser with the corporation, as the Act requires.

None of this makes the structure yours. Mumbai’s policy says plainly that a permit does not legitimise the structure it is granted on. The permission is for the display. The steel stays somebody else’s problem until the day it is not.