A total of 15 functional bridges and 11 under-construction ones on national highways have collapsed in India in the last three financial years, killing six people, the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) informed the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
The ministry said it is primarily responsible for the development and maintenance of national highways in the country and that there have been a few incidents of collapse of bridges on these highways.
“The Ministry carried out a condition survey of existing bridges as part of preparation of a detailed project report for NH development works for a section of NH and repair/rehabilitation/reconstruction of existing bridges are taken up as part of corridor development project,” union minister Nitin Gadkari said in a written reply.
The ministry has also issued guidelines for bridge inspection and condition survey of existing bridges followed by appropriate repair, rehabilitation, and reconstruction based on the nature and severity of distresses.
“The Ministry has issued policy guidelines and model bidding documents for real time structural health monitoring of bridges on continuous/ discrete manner. The Ministry has also started a comprehensive Indian Bridge Management System for condition assessment of bridges and subsequent decision making process for repair/rehabilitation/reconstruction,” the reply added.
Out of the 15 functional bridges that collapsed, two each were from Haryana, Odisha, and Manipur, while one each from Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tripura. No casualties were reported in these collapses of operational bridges.
All six deaths in bridge collapses were reported from under-construction ones. Three under-construction bridges from Bihar, two in 2022-2023 and one in 2023-24, collapsed. Two people were killed in these incidents. Two bridges each collapsed in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, while one each in Delhi, Sikkim, Maharashtra, and Kerala.
In the bridge collapse in Sikkim at Singtam-Tarku, two people were killed. The bridge collapsed due to excessive rainfall and a glacial lake outburst flood.
One more person died in Tamil Nadu when a bridge collapsed on national highway 785 due to a hydraulic jack failure while fixing the bearing.
In Delhi, a bridge collapsed on national highway 248BB, killing one person. The bridge collapsed due to a mechanical failure of the hydraulic jack.
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