Indian city Varansi’s ambitious project to replace old streetlights with LEDs in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency has been delayed, 33,000 streetlight replacements scheduled for completion in September 2015 is long overdue, reported Times of India.

The project was implemented by the Center and UP government in partnership with Delhi-based Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), and Union minister of state for power and coal Piyush Goyal announced the high mast LED lighting system would be installed in the holy city on June 9.

The old sodium vapor lamps at ghats along the Ganges River and streetlights across the city were to be replaced with LEDs within three months. EESL was responsible for the streetlight replacements in the city, and replacing 1,200 lights at 84 ghats. So far only 1,500 streetlights within the city were replaced with energy efficient LEDs, and the Varanasi municipal Corporation (VMC) has received complaints filed about dysfunctional LEDs.

Some sources within the municipal corporation noted some LED bulbs installed in streetlights broke down soon after replacement by EESL, and no action was taken to replace the lights until important officials such as the Indian Prime Minister or other dignitaries were visiting.

The 1,500 streetlights replaced is a fraction of the city’s targeted 36,000 streetlights announced last year. The EESL was supposed to meet the cost of replacing conventional streetlights with LED and the municipality was to use part of the savings in energy and maintenance cost to repay EESL over a span of five to seven years.

Varansi additional municipal commissioner B K Dwivedi said: "No official agreement was inked between VMC and EESL following the announcement of LED street light project. EESl had started the process of replacing old lights with LEDs. It had said that they would do the replacement and maintenance work for a period of seven years. But, the pace of work was slow and ion the meantime, it was decided that we would initiate tender process for LED light installation."

"The tender process is expected to commence within a couple of days following which we would ink an agreement with the shortlisted company and LEDs will be installed," he added.