Bihar bridge collapse: Will rebuild and foot the bill, firm in dock tells HC

The construction firm in the dock over the June 4 collapse of the bridge it’s building over river Ganga in Bihar has now told the Patna High Court that it’s ready to rebuild the entire 3.16-kilometre-long bridge and bear its estimated cost of about ₹1,710 crore.

The assurance was given on Friday by managing director of SP Singla Construction Pvt Ltd, Sat Paul Singla, before a division bench led by chief justice K Vinod Chandran, which is hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by former Youth Congress leader Lalan Kumar and two other persons days after a sizeable portion of the four-lane bridge being constructed between Aguanighat in Khagaria district and Sultanganj in Bhagalpur district collapsed like a pack of cards on June 4 this year.

The PIL has sought blacklisting of the construction company and judicial/CBI inquiry in to “large-scale” corruption in the construction of the bridge, a part of which had caved in last year too.

Appearing for the state government, advocate general PK Shahi had earlier informed the bench, also comprising justice Partha Sarthy, that the construction firm had expressed its willingness to rebuild the bridge at its own cost during a meeting with road construction department (RCD) additional chief secretary Pratyay Amrit.

The bench, however, asked Singla to submit an undertaking for his assurance as an affidavit during the next hearing of the case on August 25.

The construction company, which was directed on June 22 to file an affidavit within two weeks with reference to direction of the first hearing, has not yet submitted the reply.

Crying foul, petitioner Lalan Kumar alleged that the construction company and the state government officials were twisting the case to deflect the court’s attention from the large-scale corruption in the project. “One can imagine the amount of corruption in the project as the construction firm is willingly to rebuild the bridge without taking any money from the government,” Kumar said, adding that he would be compelled to move to the Supreme Court for justice.

A few engineers in the state’s road construction department also expressed surprise over the government willingness to allow an incompetent company to work on the same project. “As per the standard practice, the government should recover the entire project cost from the firm and blacklist it. The project has already been delayed for quite long,” said a senior engineer, who was not willing to be named.

On June 4, the spans on pier 10-12 of the extra-dosed cable-stayed bridge had collapsed. A purported video clip of the incident, made by locals, was widely circulated on the social media.

IIT-Roorkee experts pointed out that nature of the first partial collapse on pier number 5 (on April 30, 2022) and those on other three piers was similar, for which the project designer, McElhanney Consultancy, Canada, was apprised about.

Construction of the bridge began in 2015 and it was due to complete in 2019. The project got delayed as the bridge suffered a major disaster last year. The company was asked to finish the project by the middle of this year.