—Anil Narendra
In Bihar’s Bhagalpur, a large portion of the Agwani Ghat-Sultanganj road bridge over the Ganges river, being built at a cost of Rs 1710 crore, collapsed like a pack of cards and got immersed in the Ganges. Along with four pillars of the bridge, about 200 meters above it fell into the river. The accident happened around 6 pm on Sunday. By then the construction work had stopped and the workers had left the bridge. No death has been reported in the accident. Although a guard is said to be missing. After the video of the collapse of the bridge went viral and the opposition leveled allegations of corruption, the Bihar government claimed that the bridge did not collapse on its own, but was brought down in a planned way due to a design flaw.
On the other hand, Bihar BJP President Samrat Chaudhary said that the entire Nitish Kumar government is involved in corruption. Nitish does not have time for the development of the state. He is busy traveling. This is the second time that part of the bridge has collapsed. Even in April 2022, 36 spans of one part of the bridge collapsed.
There were serious allegations of corruption in its construction. It is a suspension bridge on stay cables, whose length is 3.160 km. North Bihar will be directly connected to Jharkhand by this bridge being constructed to connect Sultanganj of Bhagalpur to Aguwani Ghat in Khagaria district. This bridge is said to be the dream project of Nitish Kumar. Nitish laid its foundation stone in 2014 and its construction started in May 2015. The bridge was to be ready in November 2019 itself. But since then its time period has been extended six times.
Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and Road Construction Department’s Additional Chief Secretary Pratyap Amrit claimed the bridge was studied by IIT Roorkee after a portion collapsed last year. Its report is yet to come, but experts who have studied the design of the bridge say it has serious flaws. On this the government decided not to wait till the final report, so it was decided to demolish some parts of the bridge. On receipt of the final report, SP Sigla Construction will be blacklisted by registering a case. So much debris fell in the river that even the streams within a radius of 200 meters were blocked. There are total 34 pillars in the river.
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