No CBI probe, bridge to be constructed afresh: Tejashwi

Under all-round fire following the collapse of an under-construction bridge over river Ganga on Sunday, Bihar’s deputy chief minister and road construction minister Tejashwi Yadav said Tuesday that the bridge would be reconstructed in a specified time frame and rejected the opposition BJP’s demand for a CBI probe into the matter.

“The road construction department is awaiting a final report from IIT-Roorkee, which had analysed the design of the bridge and other technical aspects. We will surely get the bridge reconstructed. It is an ambitious project of the CM,” Yadav said.

He said the entire money for construction of a new bridge would be recovered from the contractor of the bridge, which is S P Singla Constructions Pvt Ltd.

“We have nothing to do with what opposition is saying. The probe is going on. Are CBI people engineers?,” Yadav told reporters in Patna.

In April last year, a portion of the same bridge, which would link Khagaria and Bhagalpur once completed, had caved in last year.

The state government, meanwhile, has slapped a show cause notice on the construction company as well as to the managing director of the Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam.

“We will try to complete the investigation at the earliest. We have served a show cause notice to SP Singla & Company as to why they should not be blacklisted. They have been given 15 days to reply. For serious dereliction of duty, the executive engineer of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam posted at Khagaria has been put under suspension and departmental proceedings have started against him. The managing director of Bihar Bridge Construction Corporation has also been show-caused as to why there was a delay when the instructions were very clear to completely demolish pier 5...A new bridge will be constructed. We will try to prioritise it so that the work on this can start after monsoon,” additional chief secretary, road construction department (RCD), Pratyaya Amrit, told news agency ANI.

“When its pier no.5 collapsed on 30th April 2022, we deployed an IIT Roorkee team for its investigation. There were some defects in its structural audit. Taking a cue from that, we had asked IIT Roorkee to examine the entire design. We suspected the same defects to be there in the design. We were waiting for that report to come. Today, we got that report also...We will examine the report and the recommendations,” said Amrit.

The bridge, more than three kilometres in length and being built at a cost of over ₹1,700 crore, was supposed to be completed by 2019. The foundation stone of the structure was laid in 2015 by chief minister Nitish Kumar.

Meanwhile, the Congress, which is a constituent of the ruling alliance in Bihar, has also demanded a fair probe into the bridge collapse.

State Congress former president Madan Mohan Jha said huge government fund was involved in project. “A proper inquiry is must and culprits should be punished,” he said.

BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi said the tender for the bridge was floated on March 10, 2014, when CM Nitish Kumar was holding the charge of road construction department. “When Nitish Kumar was regularly monitoring the bridge construction, why is he asking others why it was still incomplete,” he said.

PIL filed in HC

Meanwhile, a public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Patna High Court, seeking an independent inquiry into the collapse of the under-construction bridge.

The PIL, filed by advocate Manibhushan Pratap Sengar, also seeks action against the construction company.

Other projects of the same firm

Doubts are also being raised over other projects involving S P Singla Constructions Pvt Ltd, which is working on five more bridges in the state, besides a mega project, the Lohia Path Chakra, in the state capital, which is worth more than ₹9,000 crore.

Finance minister Vijay kumar Chowdhary, when asked by reporters about the fate of other projects if S P Singla company is blacklisted, said, “Action would be taken as per law.”