Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 4: A portion of an under-construction four-lane bridge over the Ganga river in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district came crashing down on Sunday evening.
It was the second time within a year that the bridge connecting Sultanganj and Khagaria districts collapsed. Some locals standing nearby managed to capture the collapsing of the bridge in a video which has gone viral on the social media.
The super structure of the bridge under construction fell into the river. “The slab of the bridge between pillar nine and 13 has collapsed. We have not received any information about any kind of damage. The cause behind the collapse is being probed”, Bhagalpur district magistrate Kumar Anurag said.
“The incident of under-construction bridge collapse happened at around 6 pm. No casualties reported till now. Local administration on the spot. We have asked for a report from ‘Pul Nirman Nigam’,” the officials said. The Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered an inquiry into the incident.
“It is a major negligence. A high-level probe will be carried out and guilty will be punished”, Sultanganj JD(U) MLA Lalit Kumar Mandal said. On April 30 last year, the pillar towards Sultanganj had collapsed. Due to twin incidents of collapse, the construction of bridge will take a lot of time.
Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav said, “Earlier when the bridge had collapsed, we were of the opinion that all the segments should undergo checks. A review meeting was also held in this regard. IIT Roorkee had blamed storm for the collapse of the bridge on April 30 last year. We had doubts over its design and had decided to demolish it and reconstruct the bridge.”
Reacting to the bridge collapse, the Leader of Opposition in Bihar, Vijay Kumar Sinha, slammed the Nitish Kumar-led Nitish Kumar government. “There’s a tradition of seeking commissions. It is a consequence of this mentality and political instability that there’s administrative anarchy and corruption. The system is collapsing but they are talking about Opposition unity,” he said.
In 2022, the superstructure of the four-lane bridge had collapsed from the Sultanganj end. The 3.1km-long bridge was being constructed by SP Singla Constructions Private Limited at a cost of Rs 1,710 crore.
In December last, a bridge snapped into two and fell into the Burhi Gandak river in Begusarai district. No one was injured in the incident as the bridge was yet to be formally opened to the public due to the lack of an access road. “It was to be inaugurated soon but it collapsed before that,” an official said at the time of accident last year.