After Morbi mishap, Bengal govt seeks report on cable bridges

KOLKATA: A day after the Morbi bridge collapse which killed 141 persons in Gujarat, the West Bengal Public Works Department (PWD) on Monday sought a detailed report on the condition of all the cable bridges in the state.

These cable bridges, according to sources in the state secretariat Nabanna, are mainly scattered in the jungles of the Terai and Dooars regions and the hills of Darjeeling in North Bengal.

State PWD Minister Pulak Roy has sought a report from all the district PWD engineers on this count within the next 24 hours. Roy has also convened an emergency meeting of the top bureaucrats and engineers from the department at the state secretariat at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, which is expected to be attended by Chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi.

Sources in the PWD said that Roy wants updated information on the health of the cable bridges in the districts, including reports of renovation works undertaken in the recent past.

"Following the collapse of the under-construction Vivekananda Road flyover in Kolkata in March 2016 which killed 27 people, special precaution was taken for regular maintenance and renovation of all the major bridges and flyovers in the state capital.

"The minister wants to ensure that similar precautions are adopted in case of bridges in the districts to avoid any Morbi-like disaster in the future," a PWD official said.

As already reported, a war of words has erupted between ruling Trinamool Congress and opposition BJP in West Bengal over the Morbi cable bridge mishap.

While the Trinamool leaders have claimed that the bridge collapse was a classic example of a fallout of rampant corruption in Gujarat, their BJP counterparts reminded the ruling party of the past events of bridge collapse in West bengal.