Overhead transmission lines are crucial components in power transmission systems. Well-designed maintenance strategy for overhead lines is required for power utilities to minimize operating costs, while improving the reliability of the power system. This paper presents a maintenance priority index (MPI) of overhead lines for a reliability centered approach. Proposed maintenance strategy is composed of a state index and importance indices, taking into account a transmission condition and importance in system reliability, respectively. The state index is used to determine the condition of overhead lines. On the other hand, the proposed importance indices indicate their criticality analysis in transmission system, by using a load effect index (LEI) and failure effect index (FEI). The proposed maintenance method using the MPI has been tested on an IEEE 9-bus system, and a numerical result demonstrates that our strategy is more cost effective than traditional maintenance strategies.