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Bihar bridge deliberately destroyed? Tejashwi Yadav says ‘serious defects found’
The bridge was supposed to connect Khagaria district with Bhagalpur.
After an under-construction bridge over the Ganga river collapsed in Bihar on Sunday, deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav said that it was a planned demolition as experts had found ‘serious defects’ in its design, news agency PTI reported. Videos of the Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge, which was supposed to connect Khagaria district with Bhagalpur, collapsing had gone viral on social media prompting sharp criticisms from the opposition BJP.
No casualties were reported in the incident. Addressing a press conference, Yadav along with additional chief secretary of road construction department, Pratyay Amrit, said that the decision was taken after a portion of the same bridge collapsed during a thunderstorm in 2022. The government had then assigned researchers at IIT-Roorkee to analyse the structure, he added.
Amrit said that the government didn’t want to risk it by waiting for the final report before taking down parts of the ‘flawed’ bridge.
Read: BJP reacts sharply to Bihar bridge collapse: ‘Dream project, Nitish Babu is busy…’
"It may be recalled that a portion of this bridge had collapsed on April 30 last year. I strongly raised it in my capacity as the then Leader of the Opposition. Upon coming to power, we ordered an inquiry and sought expert opinion…approached IIT-Roorkee, which is esteemed for its expertise in construction matters, to conduct a study. It is yet to come up with a final report but experts who had studied the structure had informed us that there were serious defects," Yadav said at the press conference.
Once the final report comes, which is expected shortly, the state government would contemplate action like lodging of FIR and blacklisting the company which was awarded the contract, he said.
Several ‘vulnerable’ parts of the bridge, said to have been built at an estimated cost of ₹1,700 crore, have already been pulled down due to structural flaws, Yadav revealed.
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar had asked Amrit to submit a detailed report on the incident and called for stringent action against the guilty.
Reiterating that the bridge will improve connectivity in north Bihar, Yadav added that the government will complete the project, which was supposed to have started functioning by November, 2019, once all issues in construction were resolved.
Watch: Under construction bridge collapses in Bihar before inauguration| Video
The Rashtriya Janata Dal hit out at the BJP’s accusations by tweeting that most of the construction occurred while BJP ministers Mangal Pandey, Nand Kishore Yadav and Nitin Nabin were in charge.
How the opposition reacted
While state BJP president Samrat Choudhary demanded the resignation of Kumar, former Bhagalpur MP Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, asked for a probe into the mishap that allegedly reeks of "corruption".
BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonwalla described it as "the bridge of corruption” and took a swipe at the CM. Another BJP spokesperson Priti Gandhi said Kumar should concentrate on his own state “instead of poking his nose in issues not concerning him”.
(With inputs from PTI)
