MC misses another deadline to illuminate dark spots in city

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 9

The plan of the Municipal Corporation (MC) to light up 9,310 dark spots in the city has missed another Diwali deadline. 

Worst part is that a large number of city conventional street lights, which were replaced with LEDs in last few months under the Rs 48-crore contract with the EESL, have been lying defunct. 

Residents say, “Dark spots are becoming safe ground for petty crimes and illegal activities.” Besides, they are also surprised at the system of allotting the LED installation work to the EESL, a PSU, which further floats tenders to hire a company for the job. Such system is adopted by the MC itself for other works.

“They have only erected poles during the last three months in parks, but there is no light. I have learnt that the company has floated tenders twice, but there is no bidder for providing LED lights. Even 70 per cent of lights replaced with LEDs earlier are not working. It is a strange system under which the MC has to give work to the EESL, a company, which further floats tenders for the work,” lamented councillor Devinder Singh Babla, leader of Opposition in the MC House.

“Green belt near tube well has been without lights for two years. It has become a safe ground for petty criminals and anti-social elements. They say we have floated tenders, what kind of tender is this,” rued Joginder Singh, general secretary of the residents’ welfare body in Sector 56.        

“Poles have been installed at green belts in Sector 20 during last six months, but no lights have fixed on them. The MC should involve RWAs in dark spot identification surveys,” said Dr Anish Garg, spokesperson, Chandigarh Residents’ Associations Welfare Federation (CRAWFED).       

A number of deadlines have already been missed for lighting up dark spots. Sawhney Electricals, which has been assigned the job of lighting up darks spots, had claimed in August that by Diwali the work would be complete, but now its contractor says, “It will take around three more months to complete the job.”

An MC official and the contractor said the delay was because the EESL could not get any required bidder in the tendering process to fix LED lights on poles. Ajay Raj, EESL, in charge, was unavailable for comments.        

Of the total dark spots in the City Beautiful, 6,310 are on internal roads and 3,000 in neighbourhood parks.