Pseudo bridges on Yamuna may prove costly

Chances are high that if a major flood happens in Delhi, the city may not be able to deal with it. The pseudo bridges in the city are considered to be one of the major reasons behind the city’s inability to tackle an incumbent flood situation according to the environmentalists.        

The pseudo bridges that are built taking only the lean season flow of the river into consideration and not the full flow, provides an elevated corridor built during on a lean season river channel with the cross embankments raised as access roads in the floodplains. 

These bridges, according to environmentalists, do not provide enough path to the river during the time of floods when the width of the river enlarges thereby causing river the to cause damages.   

Manoj Mishra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan says, “The biggest problem of these bridges is that it provides limited flood way and therefore cause structural damages. The examples of which can be seen of bridge at Kalannur in Yamuna Nagar  which got affected during the floods of 2010 and the bridge at Mawi in Panipat in 2013.”

Mishra also said that a lot of pseudo bridges have come up in Delhi, with Signature bridge being the last one to be designed on such a model.  “Our fight to prevent building of pseudo bridges have been going on from 2009, the time when we petitioned at Yamuna Standing Commitee (YSC) against such bridges,” said Mishra. 

The metro pool at Nizamudin bridge was prevented from being built as a pseudo bridge due to the intervention of YSC. Mishra emphasised that even though construction of pseudo bridges on Yamuna have now been stopped, the previous bridges built which are total of 9 in number can cause a damage during the time of floods if their designs are not changed.

Bhim Rawat of South Asia Network on Dams River and People says: “The main reason why these bridges came up large numbers was to prevent time and labour. Even as the construction of these bridges has been stopped in Delhi, these bridges are been constructed in the other regions wherefrom Yamuna passes, which can change the shape and flow of the river which will also affect the river flow of Yamuna in Delhi.”     

With the recent pseudo bridge coming up at Karnal, a letter addressed to the Union Water Minister Uma Bharti and Union Transport minister Nitin Gadkari has been written by activists asking why   prior experiences are also not being taken into consideration for stopping the construction of such bridges which harms the river.