Bhubaneswar: The municipal corporation and the Energy Efficient Services Limited (EESL) will conduct a joint survey of the city to identify suitable sites for installation of the energy-efficient LED street lights.

Both the agencies will also find out lanes across the city where the traditional mercury will be replaced with the LED ones. The project will be executed under the recently-launched Unnati scheme of the state government wherein all urban areas - be it in the civic body's jurisdiction or on the outskirts - will have the energy-efficient street lights.

The housing and urban development department has issued the direction.

"The corporation has the expertise to find out the dark patches or the places in need for installation of the street lights. Accordingly, it will assist the EESL officials, following which the agency will put up the lights at those places," said an official of the housing and urban development department.

At present, there are several lanes, especially in the inner parts of the city where mercury bulbs are still lighting the streets. Only the main roads such as Janpath, Sachivalaya Marg, Patel Marg, Rajpath and few others have the LED street lights. Many city outskirts such as Nandankanan road and Shampur Road do not have any street lights.

"We are periodically replacing or installing the LED street lights across the city. In the first phase, the main city arteries have been lit up with the LED bulbs. In the next phase, we put up the lights at some other stretches. However, now we will find out the lanes and the areas as well as the city outskirts for installation of the LED lights," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

The administration had begun installing LED lights in 2014. So far they have installed about 35,000 such lights at various parts of the city.

"The main stretches have got the lights, but the administration forget about the outskirts," said Shampur trader Biswas Maharana.

The mayor said they had been able to save up to 80 per cent of energy consumption after the using the LED bulbs instead of the mercury ones.

"We are installing the lights in phases. In the new survey, we will prioritise the dark patches first and then go to the lanes for installing the LED lights," said Jena.