Bihar Cabinet minister Tej Pratap Yadav has blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the collapse of the under-construction four-lane bridge over the Ganga river in Bhagalpur on Sunday.
A day after the Rs 1,700-crore bridge crashed like a house of cards, Tej Pratap, who is the elder son of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, said, “The bridge has been destroyed by the BJP. We are building the bridge and they are demolishing it.”
The political slugfest between the Bihar government and the opposition BJP continued on Tuesday, and invited a sharp reaction from the latter, which said, “may God give him good sense”.
BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Bihar government should learn to respect taxpayers’ money. “What can I say about this? May God give him good sense…Nitish babu, two Parliament buildings could have been constructed in Rs 1,700 crore which was wasted by your government. They should learn to respect the taxpayers’ money,” Prasad told news agency ANI.
Tej Pratap’s statement comes after Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav stated on Sunday that a portion of the bridge had collapsed on April 30, 2022, when the BJP was in power in the state in an alliance with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
Tejashwi Yadav had also disclosed that several vulnerable parts of the bridge had already been pulled down due to structural flaws.
On Tuesday, he said the collapsed bridge is the dream project of CM Nitish Kumar and “will be constructed in a time-bound manner”.
“The bridge will be constructed in a time-bound manner as it is a dream project of CM (Nitish Kumar). A show-cause notice is being issued to the construction company involved, and action will be taken against those responsible,” said the deputy chief minister.
Pratyay Amrit, the Additional Chief Secretary for the road construction department, told news agency PTI, “The Haryana-based construction company SP Singla Constructions, which was awarded the contract, has been served with a show cause notice by the Managing Director of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam and asked to reply within 15 days.”
The 3.16-km-long Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge was supposed to connect Khagaria district with Bhagalpur.