As the contract of CMS and Keltron nears its end in three days, new tenders to upgrade and maintain traffic signals in Delhi were opened today. As on most days, there were signal failures and avoidable jams in several parts of the city. Five companies that the Capital is familiar with submitted their technical bids including CMS and Keltron, which man the signals right now.

CMS, Keltron, Onnyx, Insta Power and Bharat Electricals Limited are the five companies that gave presentations during the technical bid today for the maintenance of 1,150 traffic light signals and blinkers in Delhi for 2009-11. Sources said that the selection would be made within two days after which the selected companies will give their commercial bids.

Delhi Police, in their tender notice, have put strict conditions and penalties this time on the companies if they fail to deliver. This time, the tender says the signals should be technically advanced. Some of the requisites in the tender are the installation of Light Emission Diodes (LEDs) on signals or blinkers, conversion of existing LED-based traffic light signals into solar signals, installation of auditory signals and automatic signal monitoring systems.

Recently, both Delhi Police and the companies manning traffic signals drew flak as a majority of the signals developed faults every other day causing traffic woes at busy junctions in Delhi.

Joint Commissioner,Traffic, Shrivastava told Newsline before going for the bidding that the current state of traffic signals showed that the workmanship was at fault.

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