Kolkata: A day after the Morbi bridge collapse incident which killed 141 persons in Gujarat, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal has sought a detailed report on the condition of all the cable bridges across the state. As per reports, the chief minister has directed the West Bengal Public Works Department (PWD) to give a detailed report on the safety and condition of all 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. The chief minister has called for a thorough inspection of all old cable bridges to avoid any future mishap like Morbi.
State PWD Minister Pulak Roy has directed all the district PWD engineers to table a report regarding the condition of the cable bridges 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 PM on Tuesday, which is expected to be attended by Chief secretary HK 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 the ruling Trinamool Congress and the 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 the bridge collapse in West Bengal.