Plan to overhaul South Delhi’s 400K streetlights in works

The project to replace sodium-lights based public streetlight system in South, Central, West and Najafgarh under MCD’s jurisdiction

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has finalised a ₹1,144 crore proposal for replacement and upgradation of the 400,000 LED streetlights under the four zones covering South Delhi area, according to officers aware of the matter. A policy proposal in this regard will be put before the house of councillors on Monday.

According to MCD, the normal life of LED fitting is around 12 years, however, due to climatic conditions and exposure, the actual life is only around 8-9 years (HT Archive)

However, officials said that the non-formation of the standing committee is likely to pose a hurdle and may impact the repair and maintenance of south Delhi’s street light network will be impacted from December.

South, Central, West and Najafgarh are the four zones under MCD’s jurisdiction in south Delhi area. “The project to replace sodium-lights based public streetlight system in these four zones was started in 2014 and more than 396,970 units were replaced. However, the seven-year contract period with the company expired last year in December and one year extension period is also ending in December this year. There is no further scope of extensions,” an official aware of the matter said.

According to MCD, the normal life of LED fitting is around 12 years, however, due to climatic conditions and exposure, the actual life is only around 8-9 years. “It is very difficult to constantly maintain such old fixtures with frequent faults. If all such old fixtures are replaced with new fittings the issue of frequent outage shall not arise and energy would also be saved as currently better luminous efficacy fixtures are available,” it says in the proposal. HT has seen a copy of the proposal. It does not clarify why the fixtures added in recent years such as 14,414 in 2020, 19,112 in 2021; 13,023 in 2022 need to be replaced.

According to the proposal, a contractor will be appointed through tendering for the maintenance and operation of the streetlights for 10 years who will also be responsible for replacement of existing LED lights, Central Control & Monitoring System (CCMS) boxes and wires. “This will be carried out in phases. The contractor will have to upgrade and replace at least 20% of the system every six month and the entire process will be completed in 2-3 years,” official added.

A nod from the house will enable MCD to initiate the tendering project but the project will need approval of the standing committee for execution as all rate and agency contracts need to be cleared by the panel which controls the purse strings of the corporation. The formation of standing committee has been pending over the last 20 months due to legal and political tussle between BJP and AAP.

“As per rules, approval of the standing committee is necessary for a project costing more than ₹5 crore. If this tender is not issued in time and work orders are not issued, then the operations of this network will be severely impacted,” the official cited above said.