‘Faulty design, will take action’: CM Nitish Kumar's first reaction to Bihar bridge collapse
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar assured that the state government will look into the bridge collapse and take strict action.
A day after an under-construction bridge over river Ganga collapsed, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday acknowledged its faulty design. Speaking to news agency ANI, Kumar said that necessary action will be initiated against those found guilty. He added that the same bridge had come crashing down in 2022 also.
“The bridge that collapsed yesterday had collapsed last year also. I have instructed officials to take strict action. It is not being constructed correctly that's why it is collapsing again & again. The department will look into it & action will be taken,” the CM said.
Watch: Bihar bridge collapses like a pack of cards in River Ganga; Moment Of Fall
It was earlier reported that Kumar had ordered a probe immediately after the incident and asked to identify those responsible. The bridge was inaugurated in 2014 by Kumar.
Videos of the Bhagalpur bridge that connected Aguvanighat and Sultanganj collapsing on Sunday were widely shared on social media. No injuries were reported in the incident.
What deputy CM Tejashwi said on the incident
Earlier, 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.
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.
Opposition hits out
The collapse of the bridge invited criticism from the BJP, Kumar's old ally in the state. BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonwalla described it as "the bridge of corruption” while JDU MLA from Sultanganj Lalit Narayan Mandal said, “We were expecting that the inauguration of the bridge would happen by November-December later this year…A probe must happen into the incident, there's some fault.”
