Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India, has launched a five-year performance-based maintenance contract scheme for road projects.

Under the scheme, laying of the new roads and maintenance of existing roads and highways will be awarded under a single contract for five years.

Repair, upgrade and renovation works would be done on a rotation basis for five years under the contract.

This scheme is expected to maintain the quality of roads, ease traffic congestion in the cities, and provide a major boost to the road infrastructure development.

The performance-based maintenance contract scheme will be launched on a pilot basis on 191km of highway roads and 185.98km of main roads in the district of Coimbatore in the first phase at an estimated cost of INR1.2bn ($22m) and INR1.1bn ($20.5m) respectively.

At the launch of the performance-based maintenance contract scheme, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa announced another INR2.4bn ($44.7m) towards various new road projects and renovation of highways and roads across the state.

"Repair, upgrade and renovation works would be done on a rotation basis for five years under the contract."

Meanwhile, Su-Kam Power Systems, a company that provides power solutions, has completed the installation of India’s first solar street lighting project in the state under the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency’s (TEDA) centralised street light project scheme.

Su-Kam has installed centralised solar photo voltaic power facilities, each with a capacity of 500W.

A group of ten existing street lights can be powered from each photo voltaic plant.

Spread across seven districts in the western part of the state, the centralised street light project is expected to power 3,220 street lights through 322 500W units for TEDA.

Su-Kam is responsible for commissioning and maintenance of the street lights for five years.