A decade later, this bridge is still in troubled waters

At a time politicians are busy promising the moon to voters, the 1,433m Barbendia bridge on the Barakar river in Nirsa is a reminder of government apathy since August 2009, when the bridge’s pillars collapsed.

Ten years on, both Nirsa MCC MLA Arup Chatterjee and former state water resources minister Aparna Sengupta, who’s now with the BJP, are blaming each other.

A special division of the rural engineering organisation (REO) began work on the bridge on January 20, 2008. Work stopped on August 20, 2009, when two pillars caved in and two others bent.

Efforts to resume work on the bridge — that could have cut down the distance between Nirsa and Jamtara from 65km to 16km — came a cropper. Allegedly, government departments such as rural engineering organisation and road construction lacked coordination.