MCG Opens Night Room to Track Main Road Lights

GURUGRAM: The Municipal Corporation on Tuesday opened a dedicated night control room at its Sector 34 office to monitor streetlights on the city's main roads and push faster repairs when lamps stay dark.

Seventeen MCG employees have been assigned to inspect streetlights along main roads after dark. They are to flag non-functional lights and send details to the control room. Three staff members at the desk will compile those reports and notify the agencies responsible for repair. A junior engineer will supervise the room on a rotational basis.

How the system is meant to work

Executive engineer Sachin Yadav said the arrangement is intended to create a more structured system for monitoring lights on major roads, identifying faults and ensuring information reaches the responsible agency without delay. He said night-time oversight should improve how quickly dead lamps are logged.

MCG maintains around 1.5 lakh streetlights in sectors 1 to 57, which fall under the new control-room watch. Streetlights in sectors 58 to 67 and 81 to 115 are maintained by Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran. Sectors 68 to 80 come under the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority, which has about 1,500 streetlights. Roughly half of those are already linked to GMDA's integrated command and control centre, with tendering underway for the rest. GMDA also maintains additional lights installed under road beautification works, including stretches along MG Road.

Residents can still lodge complaints through MCG's grievance channels, including the toll-free helpline 18001801817 and the online grievance portal. The night room is an internal escalation layer for main roads rather than a replacement for those public channels.

In April, MCG had run a campaign to cover electrical panels of streetlights ahead of the monsoon to reduce shock and short-circuit risks. Dark stretches on arterial roads at night remain a frequent civic complaint, especially where maintenance is split across MCG, HSVP and GMDA. Officials said the Sector 34 desk is meant to cut the gap between a field sighting and a repair ticket for the agency that owns the pole.

Dark pockets on Golf Course Road feeder lanes, old Gurgaon bazaar edges and sector arterials still generate nightly complaints even when individual poles are logged on paper. Splitting ownership across MCG, HSVP and GMDA is why a single night desk at Sector 34 can only cover the MCG slice directly and must relay other faults to the matching agency.

Whether response times improve will show in how quickly agencies acknowledge the night desk's reports. For now, the corporation has put named staffing numbers and a rotational JE on the record for main-road monitoring after dusk. Complainants who still see a dead lamp after a field visit should keep the portal ticket number; the control room is an internal escalation path, not a substitute for a documented grievance.