A bridge near Babupur Bakharpur panchayat in Pirpainti block, Bhagalpur district, collapsed on Friday, adding to the ignominy Bihar is already facing over the poor quality of infrastructure.

The incident has disrupted connectivity of the area with Bhagalpur district headquarters and the neighbouring areas of Jharkhand.

A couple of pillars of the bridge subsided early on Friday morning, following which the vehicular movement was stopped on it.

The river branch was raging with a heavy flow of water as the Ganga was flooded.

Bhagalpur district magistrate, Nawak Kishor Choudhary, said: “The small bridge was damaged around 6am when one of its pillars subsided a bit. It is located in Pirpainti and connects the Babupur area with Bakharpur Road. Only a portion of the bridge, and not the entire structure, has gone down slightly.”

Choudhary has ordered an enquiry into the collapse and technical experts have been called to assess the damage, as well as, look into the possibility of salvaging it.

A statement issued by the district magistrate’s office said that one of the pillars of the bridge subsided due to excessive rise in the water level.

There was confusion over when the bridge was constructed, with various government agencies and local people dating it back to two years to 20 years.

The latest cave-in comes within a week of a portion of 5.5km-long mega bridge over the Ganga between Bakhtiyarpur (Patna district) – Tajpur (Samastipur district) falling down and a small bridge crumbling in Munger district.

At least 17 big and small bridges have collapsed in Bihar since June this year. The state has witnessed more than two dozen such incidents in the past two years. Every collapse reeked of lax quality control, substandard construction, and corruption.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav slammed the Bihar government over the collapse and taunted that though “the roots of corruption run deep in chief minister Nitish Kumar’s governance, the pillars of bridges are equally superficial. This is the reason that bridges worth thousands of crores of rupees have crumbled down in the past two-three months.”

Tejashwi added: “Have you ever heard any statement of the chief minister over the corruption behind the falling bridges or has he taken action on any big ‘whale’ of corruption? How could he do so? After all, he is the one who has fed the small fish and turned them into whales.”