Chennai: Greater Chennai Corporation has formed an 18-member panel headed by three IAS officers to ensure all street lights across the city work and there are no dark spots. The panel, which sureyed the city over Sunday night and the wee hours of Monday, identified 1,817 lights that were not working. The city has 3,11,285 street lights across roads, streets, flyovers, subways, parks, bus termini, TNUHDB housing tenements and burial grounds.The panel, comprising of 15 senior officials revenue officers, chief engineers and superintending engineers, will carry out late night inspections after 7pm. The non-functioning streetlights will be reported to the GCC commissioner.GCC commissioner G S Sameeran said during the inspections, the officials have been told to check street light poles removed due to civic works such as Tangedco cable laying or storm water drain works, and were yet to be reinstalled.“Nearly 27 locations require reinstallation of lights. Out of the 1817 lights identified, 60% of the lights had accessories fault. These were told to be cleared within 24 hours. The rest of the 40% lights had issues with cable fault or connection. These will be cleared in 48 hours,” he said. The commissioner has also urge people to flag complaints to 1913 if they find dysfunctional or dim street lights.Several of the street light poles in the city, which were raised during the 2015-16 period as part of an LED-shift from the yellow sodium-vapour lamps, remain rusted with poor maintenance.This is because the seven year contract for these street lights expired in 2022, and since then they were not renewed. Top companies like Crompton and Philips refused to service for GCC after that and the civic body too did not renew the annual maintenance contracts (AMC).In 2025, GCC tendered out for a third-party contractor to fix the street lights but these contractors couldn’t source the components of Philips and Cromptom, and also did not have technical expertise to fix the centralised street light monitoring system. This led to lights not turning on at 6pm sharp in the evening, and officials having to manually turn on the system. Officials said they will go for fresh tenders with reputed companies to maintain the lights once the state budget is presented.
