As many as 51 traffic signals across the Pune Police Commissionerate limits stopped working around 8 am on Friday after an issue emerged during the ongoing installation and updating of new prepaid electricity meters, according to Pune City Police.
The disruption affected traffic signals at multiple locations across the commissionerate area. The police communication did not identify the affected junctions, meaning motorists and commuters were not given a location-wise list of signal failures. It also did not specify how long the signals would remain out of service.
According to information shared by Pune City Police, officials contacted a junior engineer from the Pune Municipal Corporation’s Electrical Department to determine the cause of the outage. The engineer, identified as Murmure, reportedly said that new prepaid electricity meters were being installed and that related updating work was under way.
Some signals stopped functioning during that process, the engineer reportedly told officials. Efforts were being made to restore the signals, but the police communication did not provide a confirmed restoration time or identify the specific technical issue that caused the failures.
Traffic signals are a critical part of junction-level traffic management because they regulate the movement of vehicles and pedestrians. When multiple signals stop operating at the same time, traffic management becomes dependent on conditions at individual junctions and on the response of traffic personnel. In this case, the reported outage extended across several locations within the Pune Police Commissionerate limits, rather than being confined to a single intersection.
The incident also linked a citywide mobility disruption to work being carried out on the electricity metering system. The available information did not state whether the affected signals were connected to a common power arrangement, whether the meter work was being undertaken simultaneously at multiple locations, or whether any traffic personnel had been deployed at each affected junction.
Pune City Police did not provide a list of the 51 locations in its communication cited by the report. It also did not announce a deadline for completing the restoration. The PMC Electrical Department’s response, as reported, was limited to confirming that installation and updating work was in progress and that efforts were being made to bring the signals back into operation.
Further details on the affected junctions, the technical cause of the failures and the time required for restoration had not been provided in the information available at the time of reporting.
