The Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge, an under-construction bridge in Bihar on the Ganga River, collapsed in Bhagalpur on Sunday evening. This is the second time the bridge has collapsed.
A guard from the SP Singla Company has been said to be missing since the collapse. His body has not been recovered yet and State and National Disaster Response Forces are trying to trace him, officials said.
The incident took place around 6 pm on June 4. Hours after the collapse, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered a probe into the incident to identify those responsible.
On Monday morning, Kumar said that the bridge was "collapsing again and again" because it was not being constructed correctly. The department will look into it and take action, he said.
The moment when the bridge collapsed was captured by several locals on their phones and cameras and the video is circulating on social media.
An official told ANI that the local administration was on the spot and that the Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Ltd., a Bihar government undertaking that constructs bridges and roads, had been asked to submit a report.
Bihar Leader of Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha, reacting to the news, accused Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's government and the administration's alleged corruption of the collapse.
"There's a tradition of seeking a commission. It is a consequence of his mentality of political instability that there's administrative anarchy and corruption. System is collapsing but they are talking about Opposition unity," Sinha said.
Eyewitness Pramod Kumar expressed his fear over the bridge collapse to ANI.
"Not sure what kind of material is being provided for the bridge construction," he said. "Not sure if public will ever be able to use this bridge."
Another eyewitness, Rakesh Kumar, said that he initially thought the collapse was a blast. This shows the corruption in the government, he said.
A section of the same bridge collapsed during a thunderstorm just over a year ago on April 29, 2022. There were no reports of any causality then either.
The construction of the bridge began in 2014 and was due to be completed in 2019. The 3,116-metre-long bridge on completion was slated to have the country's longest extradosed spans and a high-level observatory that would offer the users a unique view of the river.
Reacting to the most recent collapse, Sultanganj's MLA Lalit Narayan Mandal from the Janata Dal (United) party said that it was an unfortunate incident.
We were expecting that the inauguration of the bridge would happen by November-December later this year (2023), he added.
This is a developing story with more news to come.
First Published: Jun 4, 2023 8:21 PM IST
