At a time politicians are busy promising the moon to voters, the 1,433m Barbendia bridge on the Barakar river in Nirsa is a reminder of government apathy since August 2009, when the bridge’s pillars collapsed.

Ten years on, both Nirsa MCC MLA Arup Chatterjee and former state water resources minister Aparna Sengupta, who’s now with the BJP, are blaming each other.

A special division of the rural engineering organisation (REO) began work on the bridge on January 20, 2008. Work stopped on August 20, 2009, when two pillars caved in and two others bent.

Efforts to resume work on the bridge — that could have cut down the distance between Nirsa and Jamtara from 65km to 16km — came a cropper. Allegedly, government departments such as rural engineering organisation and road construction lacked coordination.

“The bridge would have proved convenient for a large number of pilgrims visiting Baidyanathdham in Deoghar from the across the state,” said Mugma, Nirsa resident Shashi Bhushan Tiwari, regional secretary of the Rashtriya Colliery Mazdoor Sangh. “It would have helped patients from Santhal Pargana, especially Jamtara, Sahebganj, Dumka and Pakur, to reach Dhanbad for affordable medical care at the state-run PMCH.”

He added that it was unbelievable that the bridge had not yet been built.

“What can I say except that it’s a glaring example of the indifference of successive governments to major infrastructure schemes, and a huge waste of public money.”

He said the government had to spend over Rs 2,000 crore on constructing the Sahebganj-Ranchi road. “Had the bridge been built, that expense might have been spared.”

Former water resources minister and BJP candidate from Nirsa Assembly seat Aparna Sengupta, under whose tenure as Forward Bloc Nirsa MLA work had begun, blamed the present MLA.

“Not just the Barbendia bridge, all government infrastructure schemes are in limbo due to the inaction of the present MLA Arup Chatterjee,” she fumed.

Chatterjee rejected Sengupta’s charges.

“I have repeatedly raised the issue (of the bridge) in the call attention motion (of the Assembly. It is due to my sustained efforts that the state has initiated the process to clear technical hurdles in bridge construction. Work is likely to resume after elections,” he said.

He claimed that the government had finally decided to make a new bridge through the road construction department. “But a no-objection certificate will have to be issued by the REO to the road construction department, because the new bridge will be built adjacent to the half-built bridge one whose pillars had fallen in 2009. The process of the NoC had moved forward but the model code of conduct came into force,” he said.

More than 10 years ago, a three-member government committee had found that the pillars collapsed as the foundation was not strong enough. Instead of piling 64.33 feet of steel frames beneath the pillars, the construction firm M/sGanesh Ram Dokania of Deoghar had put only 22 feet.

• Nirsa votes on December 16