Central India’s Madhya Pradesh Government recently suspended seven engineers for the faulty design of a 200 million rupee ($2.3 million)bridge with a 90-degree turn.
The new Rail Over Bridge in Bhopal was announced 10 years ago and cost the state of Madhya Pradesh over 200 million rupees to complete. It was supposed to improve connectivity between Mahamai Ka Bagh, Pushpa Nagar, and the station area with New Bhopal, but all it has managed to do so far is spark controversy over a major blunder in its design – a nearly 90-degree turn built into the bridge. Photos of the questionable feature recently went viral on Indian social media, raising concerns over safety and how engineers could have overlooked such a critical error.
After the controversial bridge started training on X (Twitter), Chief Minister Mohan Yadav launched an inquiry into the situation and subsequently announced the suspension of seven engineers involved in its design, as well as another inquiry into the activity of a retired superintendent engineer in connection with the faulty design.
“Seven engineers, including two chief engineers, have been suspended with immediate effect. A departmental inquiry will be conducted against a retired sub-engineer. Both the construction agency and the design consultant have been blacklisted for submitting faulty design of the ROB,” Yadav said.
Both the design consultant and the architect firm involved in the construction of the Rail Over Bridge have been blacklisted by the local government, but VD Verma, the chief engineeron this project, previously said that he and his team had no other choice but to build the 90-degree turn due to limited land space and the presence of a metro station nearby. Bhopal authorities are now proposing that more land be purchased, which would allow the implementation of a safer turn.
The 648-metre bridge, which cost 200 million rupees to build, was meant to eliminate long delays at railway crossings and shorten the commute for nearly three hundred thousand people, but so far it is only generating controversy.
