MCG revives five-year-old project: All streetlights to be operated from control room

Around 80,000 streetlights in the city might be operated from a control room by April next year, officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) said on Friday. The matter was discussed at the MCG house meeting held in Civil Lines on Thursday.

The corporation is in the process of reviving a 2017 project of linking all streetlights to a circuit so that they can be monitored from a control room, officials said in response to requests put forward by a dozen councillors to provide their wards with 200 streetlights each.

MCG commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja asked councillors to submit a list to the corporation’s additional commissioners listing the 200 points in their wards where streetlights need to be installed, following which the officials will take up the matter with the concessionaire.

“Around 300 streetlights across two streets in Sector 14 were linked to a circuit on a trial basis, following which all of them were successfully switched on and off with the click of a button last week,” a senior MCG official privy to the matter said. The official further said that a centralised control room and monitoring system are being set up at the MCG’s Sector 39 office as part of the project. The civic body aims to link all streetlights in the city to a circuit by April next year.

According to another MCG official, the project was delayed by five years due to disagreement in payments to a contractor tasked with installing and maintaining streetlights, and the setting up of circuits and the control room. “The MCG is on track to link all streetlights within the next six months,” he said.

Defunct streetlights are a major issue in Gurugram. According to MCG officials, the civic body receives around 30 complaints daily during non-monsoon months. The number of complaints jumps to 60 per day during monsoons due to disruption in power supply and voltage fluctuation.