CM sets up bridge inspection panel
Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has set up a high-power committee headed by the Chief Secretary to probe the Majerhat bridge caving-in incident that has claimed three lives and left 24 injured.
Banerjee, who had visited the spot after returning from Darjeeling on Wednesday, held a high-level meeting at Nabanna on Thursday to take necessary measures to avert similar incidents in future. The top brass of the state government including senior ministers, bureaucrats and senior police officers were present at the meeting headed by the Chief Minister.
After the meeting, the Chief Minister stated that "many probable reasons including vibration caused due to Metro work have come up as one of the causes behind the collapse of a portion of the Majerhat bridge that was constructed 54 years ago during the Congress regime in Bengal. All angles will be looked into and all the agencies will be questioned. Nobody will be spared if any negligence is found on their part during the investigation that will be undertaken by the high-power committee."
The said committee will be headed by Chief Secretary Malay De including other members like Naveen Prakash, Additional Chief Secretary of the state Irrigation department; Arnab Roy, Principal Secretary of the state Public Works Department; Subrata Gupta, Principal Secretary, Urban Development and Municipal Affairs department; Manoj Pant, Principal Secretary of the Public Health Engineering department; Surajit Kar Purkayastha, State Security Advisor; Virendra, Director General of Police; Rajeev Kumar, Commissioner of Kolkata Police; Srikumar Bhattacharya, former Engineer-in-Chief of the state Public Works Department (PWD) and Rajarshi Mitra, Joint Secretary Personnel and Administrative Reforms and e-Governance Department. Mitra is the convener of the committee.
The state PWD has already placed its report in connection with the Majerhat bridge incident and now the Chief Secretary will be seeking reports of experts in this connection.
She also added that the committee will give its report in this connection "as early as possible that could be a maximum of seven to eight days". The committee will start functioning from Thursday itself.
The Chief Minister has said that there should not be any media trial before the final report comes in. When asked about the claim of the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited that the Metro work has "no relation" with the caving-in of the bridge, Banerjee said: "They had issued the statement within 12 hours of the incident… How did they do the investigation so fast?"
She further maintained that it is only after the final report of the committee that a decision on the repairing and other aspects of the collapsed bridge will be taken. She further said that there are around 20 bridges in and around the city which are "weak". In a bid to avoid a Majerhat rerun, there will be restrictions on the plying of 20-wheeler trucks on the bridges as they cause immense damage to the same.
At the same time, the Chief Minister has formed a Bridge Inspection and Monitoring Cell at the state level to carry out regular health inspections of the bridges in the state. At the same time, the state Public Works Department, Irrigation Department and Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) will be having their separate Inspection and Monitoring Cells. She further stated that an elaborate plan has also been made for traffic movement in the area.
