Street lights blaze away on BB Ganguly Street (Bowbazar) well into the morning. A Telegraph picture

Lights have been blazing well into the day on several roads for the three months the city has been suffering repeated power cuts because of electricity shortage.

The organisations responsible for maintaining the street lights — the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC), Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners (HRBC), Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) and the public works department as well as CESC — are playing the blame game.

The CMC maintains about 130,000 lamp posts, more than any of the other organisations. The HRBC maintains lights on Park Street, Gariahat and AJC Bose Road flyover, while the CMDA is responsible for lights on the Park Circus Connector and Rashbehari Connector.

Eighty per cent of the lights maintained by the civic body are operated manually, while the rest are fitted to automatic switches. Most wards do not have an employee to operate the manual lights. The automatic switches, both photosensitive and timer-based ones, have developed glitches.

“The corporation is wasting public resources. I tried several times to call up my borough office but failed to get through,” said Sourav Malani. Lights in front of his house on BB Ganguly Street remain on till late in the morning.

An engineer in the civic lighting department said: “We are short-staffed and are forced to ask employees from other departments to switch the lights on and off. Most of them switch off lights in the afternoon.”

Failure to operate the lights properly is “costing the CMC’s coffers Rs 1.5-2 crore”.

CR Avenue, Burrabazar, Esplanade, Ballygunge, Gariahat and AJC Bose Road flyover are some of the places where lights are not being switched off at the stipulated time.

Director-general (lighting) Pradip Jyoti Biswas blamed maintenance work. “The lights are not being switched off in many areas because of our maintenance work. But whenever we receive information about problems with the street lights, our engineers rush there,” he claimed.

The other organisations are not doing their job any better. Last Thursday, the street lights in Gariahat were on till afternoon. “There are people responsible for operating the lights. They must be CMC employees,” said an HRBC engineer.