Public Works Minister Gopal Bhargava has suspended Manager (Engineer) S.P. Dubey with immediate effect and ordered departmental action against the then District Manager Pawan Arora and Assistant General Manager D.K. Jain (retired) following collapse of the approach road of the bridge over Kaliasot river near Gauharganj on the Bhopal-Jabalpur national highway. Also, instructions have been issued to blacklist CDS India Limited, the company that designed and built the bridge and the Project Consultant Theme Engineer. He said that the entire damage would be compensated by the concerned construction agency.
Principal Secretary Public Works Neeraj Mandloi said that on receiving information about the incident, a team of senior technical experts has been sent to the spot.
The traffic on the National Highway is being operated smoothly. Under this, the movement of vehicles has been restored from 4 lanes instead of 8 lanes. During the review of the incident, he instructed the Managing Director Road Development Corporation to get the structures constructed on the entire route, inspected from IIT Roorkee, in two months.
Managing Director Road Development Corporation Shashank Mishra informed that the contract for the work of 48.71 km length for construction of four lane road between Gauharganj to Bhopal on Bhopal-Jabalpur National Highway No.-12 was signed by the Madhya Pradesh Road Development Corporation in the year 2017 on receiving approval and expenditure from the Government of India. On this route, 3 bypasses, 4 grade separators, 5 underpasses, 3 major bridges, 13 minor bridges and 32 culverts were constructed.
The construction agency for this work was CDS India Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi and Theme Engineer Services Jaipur was appointed as its Authority Engineer. Instructions have been given by the department to conduct technical audit of all the construction works done by the Theme Engineering company in the state in the last five years.
Mishra informed that due to the continuous rain in Bhopal and its surrounding area for the last few days and the unexpected flow of water due to the opening of the gate of Kaliasot dam on the night of July 24, 2022, the nearly 40-metre-long security wall built along the shore of the approach service road of the huge bridge over Kaliasot river, collapsed, cutting off the service lane on one side.
At present there is no damage to the bridge. He said that due to the strong flow of water at present, the work of pitching is being done by filling about 25 thousand sacks of sand for safety.
He said that it would take about 4 months for the entire damage to be repaired and reconstructed. This entire work will be done by the contractor company M/s CDS India Limited and Pile Foundation at their own cost.
