Most roads in Adityapur, an industrial township in adjoining Seraikela-Kharsawan district, are dark after sunset due to defunct street-lamps, an inconvenience and safety hazard for commuters.
For over two months now street lamps have remained unlit on the four-lane Tata-Kandra road, NIT Road and Adityapur toll bridge road. Most high-mast lamps installed at strategic locations across Adityapur have not been working either.
As a result, the number of accidents have gone up. Also commuters, especially students, find it unsafe while travelling on these roads.
On Saturday night, a staff bus of Adhunik Power and Natural Resources turned turtle near Adityapur toll bridge crossing on Tata-Kandra Road as the driver failed to negotiate a turning.
Those on motorbikes have to be extra cautious. They find it extremely difficult to ride through Tata-Kandra road and Adityapur toll bridge in the dark as they get blinded by headlights of cars and trucks coming from the opposite direction.
“I have to pay extra attention while riding through Tata-Kandra road and subsequently through Adityapur toll bridge as I get blinded due to headlight beams of approaching vehicles. If the streetlights were on, things would have been different,” Raghunath Mahto, a resident of Ulyan who works in an industrial unit in Adityapur, told The Telegraph.
On the 15 km-long Tata-Kandra Road, maintained by Jharkhand Accelerated Road Development Corporation (JARDCL), as many as 337 lamp-posts don’t work.
On the 2 km-long Adityapur toll bridge, which is maintained by Adityapur Toll Bridge Company (ATBCL), 28 lamp-posts are duds.
The 2.5 km-long NIT Road that leads to the Tata-Kandra Road, is totally dark too. All 50 lamp-posts, meant to be maintained by Jharkhand Industrial Area Development Authority (JIADA), formerly the Adityapur Industrial Area Development Authority, are defunct.
No one from the JARDCL and ATBCL could be reached. But JIADA's regional deputy director Ranjana Mishra said indiscriminate road digging for various projects was the primary reason for the blackout.
“The reason why street lamps on NIT Road don’t work is that underground cables had been damaged due to road digging. We had conducted a survey recently and found that road digging for various projects is the reason behind this,” she told The Telegraph.
Mishra said the problem had been compounded with the agency that was contracted to maintain street lamps refusing to step in. The agency claimed that, as per its agreement, it was not supposed to repair street lamps that weren’t working because of damage to cables due to road digging.
“We are trying resolve the issue by consulting other departments,” she said.
It is, therefore, clear that streetlights are unlikely to come on in Adityapur any time soon.
A local NGO, Jan Kalyan Morcha, wrote to Seraikela-Kharsawan deputy commissioner A. Dodde on Monday, seeking his immediate intervention.
“With Puja not far away, residents of Adityapur are getting worried. They will face immense problems if the Seraikela-Kharsawan district administration does not intervene to ensure that street lights are repaired soon,” said morcha chief Om Prakash.