Supreme Court issues notice on PIL seeking structural audit of bridges in Bihar

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a structural audit of all the recently-completed, under-construction, and old bridges in Bihar.

Issuing notice, a bench, headed by CJI D.Y. Chandrachud sought responses from Bihar's Departments of Road Construction and Rural Works, the Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, and the National Highway Authority of India in the matter.

The PIL sought directions to the Bihar government to establish a permanent body, comprising high-level experts, for continuous monitoring of all the existing and under-construction bridges and maintaining a comprehensive database on the health of all existing bridges.

The PIL, filed by advocate Brajesh Singh, said that the instant issue requires an urgent consideration of the apex court as within the last two years, three major under-construction bridges and several other incidents of bridge collapse happened in Bihar.

"Back-to-back collapse of bridges in Bihar clearly indicates that there have been no lessons learnt and safety of critical infrastructure like bridges is not taken seriously. These routine incidents cannot be termed merely accidents, they are manmade disasters," it said.

The plea added that Bihar is the most flood-prone state in India, with the total flood-affected area being 68,800 sq. km. which is 73.06 per cent of its total geographical area. Hence, such routine accrual of the incident of falling bridges in Bihar is more disastrous and therefore the urgent intervention of the Supreme Court is required to save the lives of people at large, it said.

The PIL sought directions to the Bihar government to make a proper policy or mechanism for real-time monitoring of the bridges constructed and under construction on the same analogy as developed by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.