Jharkhand chief minister Champai Soren on Sunday laid the foundation stone for the construction of a bridge on river Barakar that divides Dhanbad and Jamtara districts.

The proposed bridge will connect Barbendia under the Nirsa block of Dhanbad district with Birgram of Jamtara district and is being called as Barbendia bridge.

The 1,584-metre-long bridge will be constructed at a cost of Rs 263.88 crore using high-end technology and will also reduce the distance between the district headquarters significantly.

“Once constructed, you can travel to Dhanbad easily as the bridge will reduce the distance of about 65-70km to almost half of it,” the chief minister said while addressing the gathering at Birgram on the Jamtara side of the Barakar river.

However, the BJP leaders were not happy with the choice of the venue for the programme. They alleged that the state government neglected Dhanbad, Nirsa in particular, while organising the programme. So they held another programme on their own to mark the same occasion.

“The bridge has been named after Barbendia which is in Dhanbad district. So the foundation stone laying should have been done on the Dhanbad side of the river,” said P.N. Singh, BJP MP of Dhanbad, adding they felt “it was an insult to the people of the district”.

“I raised the issue of construction of the bridge in the state Assembly many times and also personally requested the chief minister to
hold the function here in Dhanbad district but that was ignored,” alleged Nirsa MLA Aparna Sengupta under whose constituency Barbendia falls.

While the official programme was attended by the concerned minister, MLA, senior government officials and locals, the one organised by the BJP was attended by Singh and Sengupta, besides party workers.

People now cross the Barakar river by boat and some even died when an accident occurred about two years ago.

“That type of accident can be avoided when the bridge comes up,” road construction minister Basant Soren said
on the occasion, reminding
the tragedy.