All streets in Gurugram to be illuminated by July-end, say officials

Municipal Corporation of Gurugram officials said the project, which started on March 30, is on track and will be completed by the end of July.

As many as 57,000 LED streetlights will be installed across Gurugram by July-end, which will light up dark stretches and also help save 13 million units of electricity, according to the officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG).

Gurugram agencies are in the process of setting up LED streetlights across the city. Work is already under way in Sector 4. (HT Photo/Yogendra Kumar)

Of the total number, LED lights will replace 49,000 existing sodium vapour bulbs and the rest 8,000 will be installed in new poles, as a part of a project being carried out by the MCG in collaboration with the government-owned Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL). The budget of the project is Rs 92 crore.

In the last two parts of the series on inadequate streetlights in Gurugram, HT had highlighted how no sector in the city is fully lit, which makes many areas vulnerable to accidents and crime.

MCG officials said the project, which started on March 30, is on track and will be completed by the end of July.

“The MCG is on target to complete the work by July-end and to ensure that all streets are lit with the new LED lights. So far, more than 10,000 streetlights have been installed across the city,” Lalit Jindal, executive engineer of the MCG, said.

The work of installing LED streetlights started in Ward 1 and has currently, work is ongoing in wards 2, 3, 5, 33 and 34. The new lights will be installed across all 35 municipal wards of the city.

The streetlights are being installed under the Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) of the central government, with Gurugram being the first city in Haryana to adopt this programme.

In October 2017, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the MCG and EESL for installing 49,000 streetlights in the city, which would be valid for 10 years. As per the agreement, the MCG will bear the cost of upgrading the infrastructure and the EESL will meet the maintenance costs.

“Currently, maintenance of streetlights is a major issue. Many of them remain unused and are not repaired for long despite repeated requests and reminders to the MCG. Hopefully, the situation will improve,” said Neelu Kapoor, who lives near Sohna Road.

The project was to be completed by January, but MCG officials conceded that due to revision in the estimated cost and the equipment, the project has been delayed and the deadline pushed to July.

As a result of this revision, the cost of the project increased from Rs50 crore to Rs92 crore.

According to MCG officials, when work commenced on the project in December 2017, only sodium vapour bulbs were to be replaced with energy-efficient LED bulbs, using the existing infrastructure.

However, officials found that the infrastructure, such as the electric cables, circuits and poles, at many sites, had flaws or were not equipped to facilitate the installation of an LED bulb.

The project was revised and the new proposal included replacing the infrastructure of the streetlights.

After the Urban Local Bodies approved the project, which included 8,000 additional streetlights, in March, work started at the end of the month and is expected to be completed by July.