Due to frequent bridge collapses in Bihar, the state government suspends 17 engineers

Patna, July 5 (IANS): In response to the frequent bridge collapses in the state, the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government suspended 17 engineers on Friday.

The decision was announced by Chaitanya Prasad, Deputy Chief Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, and Deepak Kumar Singh, Deputy Chief Secretary, Ministry of Rural Works, who stressed the state government’s seriousness towards the matter.

Of the 17 suspended engineers, 11 are from the Water Resources Department, including senior engineers Amit Anand and Kumar Brijesh, assistant engineers Raj Kumar, Chandramohan Jha, Simran Anand and Neha Rani and junior engineers Mohammad Majeed, Ravi Kumar Rajneesh, Rafi-Ul-Hoda Ansari, Ratnesh Gautam and Prabhat Ranjan.

In addition, six engineers of the rural works department, including senior engineers Anjani Kumar and Ashutosh Kumar Ranjan, junior engineers Virendra Prasad and Manish Kumar and two others, have been suspended.

“In recent times, nine bridges have collapsed in different districts, six of them were very old while three were under construction. On July 3 and 4, six culverts built over the Chhadi and Gandaki rivers collapsed in Siwan and Saran districts,” said Chaitanya Prasad.

“Action is being taken against the contractors, including initiation of blacklisting process to prevent them from being awarded contracts in future. Recovery of payments made to the contractors is in progress, while pending payments to all contractors have been stopped for now,” Prasad added.

Deepak Kumar Singh said, “Three drains of the rural works department were damaged. A four-member team led by chief engineer Nirmal Kumar was formed to investigate the incident. Based on his report, six engineers of the department were suspended.”