Brajesh Singh, an advocate, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking directions to the Bihar government to conduct a high-level structural audit of all the bridges in the state, including those under construction.

Singh stated in his petition that the frequent mishaps have caused massive loss of public money, deaths and untold hardships for the people.

The petition stated: “It is a matter of grave concern that in the state like Bihar, which is the most flood-prone state of India, the total flood-affected area in the state is 68,800sqkm, which is 73.06 per cent of the total geographical area of the state.

“Hence such routine accrual of the incident of falling bridges in Bihar, is more disastrous as the lives of people at large at stake and therefore the urgent intervention of this hon’ble court is required to save the lives of people at large who are in the present living in the uncertainty, as the under-construction bridges before its accomplishment got collapsed in the routine manner,” it said.

Two more bridges collapsed in Bihar between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, causing widespread panic, severing communication lines and giving the Opposition more fodder to slam the state government.

Both collapses were reported in Saran district. A bridge over a Gandak river tributary at Saraiya panchayat in Baniapur block collapsed on Thursday morning. It was constructed around five years ago with panchayat funds. The other one, a British-era bridge on another Gandak tributary, fell on Wednesday evening at Dandaspur Jangalvilas Tola at Janata Bazar. With the latest cave-ins, 12 bridges have collapsed in the state in the past 17 days.

“The bridge might have been small, but it was the lifeline for the panchayats around it. Students took this route to go to schools and colleges, farmers to sell their produce or buy farm-related goods from the market. People also took the bridge to the block offices for work apart from other activities. It collapsed because of lack of maintenance,” Ramesh Singh of Baniapur told reporters.

During a press conference on Thursday, Bihar development commissioner and water resources department additional chief secretary Chaitanya Prasad said: “A survey will be conducted of all the bridges in the state. The strength and security of all bridges that are over three decades old will be assessed. The entire exercise will be completed in 15 days. All the canals, river branches and rivulets that have been desilted recently will be re-inspected.”

RJD president Lalu Prasad slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Nitish Kumar for the back-to-back collapses. “Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar will blame the Mughals, British and the Opposition for this. Five bridges went down on Wednesday. Twelve bridges have collapsed in a fortnight. There is no account of bridges in the state,” Lalu said.