Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice for conservation of energy through use of light Emitting Diode (lED) bulbs, the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) under Mayor Alok Sharma is all set to illuminate city’s colonies and lanes with lED.
The BMC Budget for 2015-16 is having provisions of Rs17.80 crore for lED and timer streetlights in the city. The markets, colonies and lanes of the State capital would soon get enlighten with the milky light. The BMC is planning to replace the sodium lights with the modern lEDs. Sources in the BMC informed that for this agreement with a New Delhi-based company has already been done. The company besides installing lEDs free of cost would also look after its maintenance for a decade.
Notably, the BMC had earlier planned about a couple of years back to replace the sodium lights with the lEDs for lowering the consumption of electricity. Under that scheme, 2,000 lED lights were to be bought at the cost of Rs2.75 crore from the Chief Minister Infrastructure Development Fund, but that could not materialise. On an earlier occasion also the BMC planned to buy 2,000 lED lights from the Chief Minister Infrastructure Development Fund at a cost of Rs5.26 crore, tenders of that were also released, but this time also the programme could not materialise.
At present, there are 4,073 sodium vapour lights of the BMC installed at various locations of the city while there are 13,334 tube lights installed in the city.
As per the BMC plans, the lEDs would be first installed in Chowk Bazar, New Market, Bittan Market, MP Nagar and Bairagarh after that the lED lights would be installed on all the main roads of the city and in the last, lED lights would be installed in the colonies and lanes of the city.