New Delhi [India], June 5 : Bharatiya Janata Party national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla on Monday hit out at the Bihar government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, saying that the Bhagalpur bridge collapse yesterday shows how the CM has transformed from "Sushasan babu to Bhrashtachari and Kushashan babu".
"We have seen the visuals of the bridge of corruption that has collapsed under this corrupt government," Poonawalla said.
Earlier on Sunday an under-construction Aguwani-Sultanganj bridge in Bhagalpur collapsed.
The moment when the bridge collapsed in the Ganga River was caught on video by locals.
Terming the incident as Bridge Ghotala (Bridge Scam), he said that a new form of Ghotala has come after Jobs for Land Scam and Fodder Scam.
"This is the testimony of how Nitish Kumar has transmuted from 'Sushasan babu to Bhrashtachari and Kushashan babu," Poonawalla said.
A bridge, being built at a cost of Rs 1700 crore, which was supposed to be finished by March 2020, has not been completed past the deadline.
"When the last time this bridge collapsed in April 2022, an IIT Roorkee study was commissioned, that study clearly said there were structural and design flaws in the entire bridge. Taking note of this, the right step could have been taken to ensure that the bridge is reconstructed and the guilty party is made to pay every rupee of Rs 1700 crore. But this was not followed," he added.
"We saw Tejashwi Yadav, gave the green signal for the further construction of the bridge in October, last year, as per all the reports that are in the public domain and not just that, in March, this year, when a JDU MLA raised the question about the corruption and the inaction on this particular bridge, he even indicated that another section of the bridge had many kinds of faults instead of taking action on that, Tejashwi in a sense gave a clean chit to the bridge and only spoke of replacing one of the affected parts of the bridge," Poonawalla said.
"There have been many incidents like this. Bridges are collapsing after another due to corruption. One can see evidently the kind of substandard material used in this bridge," he said.
Questioning Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the BJP spokesperson said, "Today Nitish Ji should answer some specific questions about the bridges in the State that are collapsing."
"Is this the Nitish Kumar model? Is it not true that there are several bridges that have collapsed, it is not true that there are many such under-constructed projects which are undertaken under this government that are extremely unsafe for the public and need to be audited immediately," he roared.
Demanding an immediate free and fair probe to unearth the truth into this matter, Poonawalla said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his Deputy Tejashwi Yadav, both are directly responsible for this.
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