BHAGALPUR: A section of an under construction road bridge over the Ganga at Sultanganj in Bihar collapsed during a thunderstorm but there were no report of any casualty in the incident, an official said on Saturday. The incident took place at around midnight on Friday.
Sultanganj MLA Lalit Narayan Mandal said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered an investigation into the incident.
"The possibility of using sub-standard materials in the construction of the bridge cannot be ruled out ... It is a matter of investigation that the under construction bridge being built at a cost of Rs 1,710 crore could not withstand strong gusty winds," he said.
Bhagalpur district magistrate Subrat Kumar Sen told reporters that senior officers of the road construction department of Bihar government are expected to visit the site.
The construction of the 30-span bridge between Sultanganj and Aguani Ghat in Bihar had started in 2014 and was due to be completed in 2019 but work on it is still on.
The 3116 m-long bridge on completion was slated to have the country's longest extradosed spans and a high level observatory which would offer the users a unique view of the river, besides easing traffic.
An extradosed bridge is a hybrid structure between the classic cable-stayed and cantilever-girder types. Visually extradosed bridges typically have the appearance of a cable-stayed bridge with very short towers (pylons), with cable stays of shallow angle that may not extend along the full length of the deck and with a more substantial deck superstructure.
