City-wide digital tagging aimed at faster repairs and better coordination
Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) has launched a programme to assign unique identification numbers and health grades to the city’s entire road network, a civic official said on Tuesday. The move is intended to create digital records of repair history, improve inter-agency coordination and enable quicker, targeted intervention on stretches needing urgent maintenance.
Municipal commissioner Vikramaditya Singh Malik said the city has a road network of 2,152 km, including main roads, arterial links and bylanes, and the civic body has already surveyed more than 119 km in the first phase. The exercise will continue in phases across the city’s six administrative zones.
- Unique IDs will record when each road was constructed, its location and the contractor responsible for past works.
- Road stretches will be assigned grades — good, fair, poor and very poor — to indicate their condition and prioritise remedial work.
- The survey forms part of GMC’s annual initiative to curb air pollution and identify major dust-generation points before winter.
“The IDs will help us to reduce human intervention and for better coordination and monitoring. They will make tracking easy, follow-up better and intervention targeted,” Malik said.
Officials told reporters that multiple agencies are involved in construction and maintenance across the six zones, and at times it has been difficult to trace responsibility for a given stretch. Delays in repairs have been attributed to several factors, including time taken for surveys, the tendering process, weather conditions and restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
The unique identification system will create a digital trail of past work done on each road, allowing easy access to repair history and enabling the civic body to identify stretches that require immediate attention. GMC officials said the coding will also indicate the area in which the road lies and the contractor who executed previous works, which they expect will streamline follow-up and accountability.
GMC has previously identified at least half a dozen dust bowl points across the city. Officials said that establishing a digital inventory of roads and their health status will help prioritise anti-dust measures at locations that most contribute to seasonal air-quality deterioration.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Total road network | 2,152 km |
| Survey completed so far | 119+ km |
| Condition grades | Good / Fair / Poor / Very poor |
| Administrative zones involved | 6 |
The initiative also links to GMC’s engagements at the national level. Malik attended a meeting convened by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on civic conditions, where officials discussed urban governance and pollution abatement measures. GMC has earlier requested ₹900 crore from the finance ministry for air-pollution abatement in FY 2026-27, civic records show.
Local transport and public works stakeholders said the coding could help reduce repeated surveys and the administrative delay that often follows resurfacing complaints. By maintaining an electronic archive of contractors and timelines, the civic body aims to expedite warranty-based rectifications and plan preventive maintenance on a data-driven basis.
City residents, traders and commuter groups welcomed the plan in principle but noted that implementation and transparency would determine its success. Some stakeholder concerns include timely updating of the digital database, integration with existing works orders, and clarity on how inter-agency disputes over responsibility will be resolved.
Officials said the assignment of IDs and grading will be followed by periodic reassessments so that the road-health index remains current. The GMC expects the system to reduce human intervention in routine tracking, improve monitoring of repair contracts and help focus resources on stretches that most affect traffic flow and air quality ahead of winter.
Work on the mapping exercise is ongoing and municipal teams said they will publish further details, including timelines for completion of the city-wide survey, after the next phase is evaluated.
