MANISH GUPTA
Ranchi, Nov 4: The collapse of a cable bridge in Gujarat last Sunday has raised concerns about the condition of bridges across India with some states ordering immediate repair of unsafe bridges, but Jharkhand does not even have a list of such bridges in the state.
One after the other senior officials and engineers of the Jharkhand Road Construction Department (RCD), including Joint Secretary Vijay Kumar Gupta, Chief Engineer Arvind Pandey, Chief Engineer (CDO) Rajesh Kumar Singh and Superintendent Engineer KK Lal expressed their inability to share the total number of bridges in the state, leave aside highlighting the number of bridges that are unsafe for commuting.
“The bridges in the state are under various departments including the central authorities and hence we do not have the total number of bridges,” said an official, the fourth in the line of officials whose name was suggested for getting the required information.
However, when asked to share the number of bridges under the RCD, then again he was completely at a loss. Meanwhile, Jharkhand Road Construction Secretary Sunil Kumar and Engineer-in-Chief J P Singh neither took repeated calls nor replied to a message over the last two days.
Another official on condition of anonymity said that there was a report of 2016 on the condition of bridges in the state. “It had identified a list of bridges that were dangerous and needed immediate repair. But nobody knows where the report is now,” he said.
It may be noted that Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari in a reply to Lok Sabha in 2017 had cited a probe by Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS) that revealed 147 bridges in the country were dangerous and needed immediate repair.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report on accidental deaths and suicides, 36,362 people lost their lives due to drowning in 2021, and 20,313 people died due to collapse of structures over the previous 10 years. Even the country has no separate data on the collapse of bridges and deaths due to collapse of bridges.
Hours before 140-odd people died in the Morbi bridge collapse in Gujarat on Sunday evening, two cars got stuck on a British-era bridge in Odisha’s Kalahandi the same afternoon. People trapped in the car were rescued from the bridge built in 1925.
In February 2018, a parliamentary committee report highlighted the poor quality of the railway bridges in the country and blamed the nexus between officials and contractors for it. It went on to say that delay in bridgework was putting passengers’ lives at risk.
Jharkhand has no centralised data on bridges, unsafe bridges and pre-Independence bridges. The mineral-rich state has had wide road and rail networks for decades due to the heavy mining activities, particularly in areas like Dhanbad and Singhbhum.
While the Morbi tragedy got the West Bengal government on its toes as it instructed its engineers to check all the bridges in the state and report within a month, and carry out repairs immediately, the Jharkhand officials are yet to understand its seriousness.
This is despite the fact that a CAG report in 2019 revealed lack of planning, monitoring, poor execution and compromised quality of the bridges built for rural connectivity under PMGSY and CMGSY during 2014-2019 in Jharkhand for their premature collapse.
A newly-constructed bridge over Kanchi river in Tamar near Ranchi collapsed in May 2021. The bridge collapsed within two years of inauguration as its weak structure could not withstand the cyclonic winds and rainfall, and also due to illegal sand mining.
