The apex transparency panel's direction comes on an RTI applicant's plea who was denied details related to the hoardings by the NHAI.
"Since it is a well-known fact that such hoardings interfere with traffic by distracting the drivers and posing a danger to lives and property of Highway users, a proper answer to these queries would have been that on a given date or over a period, no hoardings were found along a particular stretch," Information Commissioner A N Tiwari said.
The NHAI will have an inspection carried out of the stretch of the NH-8 within four weeks and record a finding whether or not there were hoardings and advertisement banners within the prohibited area, the Commission directed.
It also wondered that instead of furnishing a response to applicant Shripal Jain, the NHAI had denied that any hoarding was sanctioned by it on NH-8 and that hoardings were not permitted to be displayed anywhere in the limits of the right of way.
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"The proper course would have been to have an inspection conducted on the given stretch of NH-8 in order to ascertain whether or not hoardings, authorised or unauthorised, had come up on right of way, Tiwari said.
"Commission would like that the NHAI must view the query in the light of its larger purpose and not in a narrow technical sense," he added, directing NHAI to provide the details to Jain within two weeks after the survey.