Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders started a verbal spat with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav after a collapse of an under-construction Aguwani- Sultanjanj bridge in Bhagalpur, Bihar on Sunday evening.
State BJP chief Smarat Chaudhary demanded the resignation of CM Nitish Kumar as part of taking responsibility for the accident.
Another BJP leader and an MP from Bhagalpur, Ajeet Sharma made a statement yesterday Blaming the incident on “corruption” and demanding a “high-level inquiry’ into the accident.
BJP IT cell chief, Amit Malviya came to Twitter and asked whether Nitish Kumar and Tejaswi Yadav would quiet the office to take cognizance of the accident.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) responded by reminding BJP that most of the construction work of the bridge happened during the BJP rule. In a tweet from RJD’s official Twitter handle, it is tweeted that Bridge was constructed under the supervision of BJP leaders like Nand Kishore, Mangal Pandey and Nitin Naveen who were the ministers in the government at that time.
What happened?
An under-construction bridge came down collapsing like a house of cards yesterday in Bhagalpur around 6 pm. This Aguwani-Sultanganj Bridge connects Bhagalpur with the Khagaria district.
This is not the first time this bridge has collapsed. Some parts of this bridge fell down on April 30 last year as well.
The bridge was built with an estimated cost of ₹1,700 crore.
In the press conference yesterday, Deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav responded to the incident and said, “It may be recalled that a portion of this bridge had collapsed on April 30 last year. We had, thereafter, approached IIT-Roorkee, which is esteemed for its expertise in construction matters, to conduct a study. It is yet to come up with a final report but experts who had studied the structure had informed us that there were serious defects.”
“Many structural defects have been pointed out by experts and we have already pulled down many portions which have been flagged as particularly vulnerable. Today’s incident confirms our worst apprehensions,” Tejaswi said in the press conference.
CM Nitish Kumar take to the media and said, “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 government has ordered an inquiry into the incident and said strict action should be taken against those responsible for it.