Guilty ex- EIC Manoranjan Mishra goes unpunished. Loss of crores to State exchequer.
BHUBANESWAR: Two bridges constructed at a cost of crores of rupees on the Udanti river in Khariar on the Biju Expressway of Nuapada district of Odisha, which were the lifeline of the district have become unusable for vehicular communications due to fracture in the bridges pile caps.
Khariar BJD MLA Adhiraj Mohan Panigrahi had protested and held a dharna against the incident when he was earlier in the Congress. But after he joined the BJD he took a U-turn and preferred to remain silent over the episode for getting a party ticket for the 2024 elections. But sacrificing the people’s interest for his own personal gains has triggered deep resentment among the locals.
When contacted, MLA Panigrahi said the two bridges would be demolished and new construction would be carried out for the benefit of people.
However, a top engineering consultant engaged by the Odisha Works Department to investigate the bridge collapse incident, has pointed out glaring lapses in the construction work and lack of proper supervision by the department engineers including former Engineer-in Chief (Civil) and Chief Engineer (Roads) Manoranjan Mishra.
The consultant’s investigation report said, “The contractor’s designer had obviously based the pile design on thee earlier (old) subsoil investigation report which was misleading. The contractor had gone ahead with the construction, claiming that it was since it was an EPC contract, all this was his work and responsibility. But he and his designer should not have adopted such short length piles when these were not seated on and in rock.”
“It was clear that the soil investigation done at the time of carrying out the design, prior to the construction, obviously was incorrect. This resulted in inadequate pile lengths, consequently the pile directly under a massive rigid pier-body will sink unless it is in and on a sturdier sub-stratum. As explained earlier, the pile-layout that had been chosen by the contractor’s designer technically is not correct.
This can lead to very high overloading of the pile directly the pier body. Unfortunately, since the culprit sat directly under the pier -body sat actually on relatively poor soil not rock, it sank, as it had to. Such culprit piles have already misbehaved and caused fracture of two pile caps, so far. More pile caps are likely to fracture in future, “the consultant report said. However, the locals have demanded a high-level probe and the guilty officials to be held accountable.