Rs 389-cr Bihar irrigation canal collapses hours before inauguration by Nitish

A portion of the wall of an irrigation canal in Bihar's Bhagalpur district collapsed on Tuesday evening and inundated local roads and neighbourhoods, hours before it was to be inaugurated by chief minister Nitish Kumar.r.

Officials said nearly 20 feet of the wall of the main canal of the Rs 389.31 -crore Bateswar Ganga Pump Nahar Yojana (BGPNY) in Kahalgaon sub-division of the district breached during a trial and water gushed through, flooding a portion of the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) township nearby.

The water receded from most areas on Wednesday morning but ankle-deep water was still seen at a half-kilometre stretch of a nearby road.

"The breach had been plugged and work is in progress to strengthen the wall of the canal where the breach was caused," said Arun Kumar, chief engineer (civil), water resources department. Nitish's visit to the area was cancelled.

 

The project was ready for inauguration in May-June this year but the event had to be cancelled because of technical difficulties, sources said.

Sources said action was taken against several water resource department officials but wasn't



confirmed officially. The local MLA, Sadanand Singh of the Congress, alleged "gross negligence of concerned officials" led to the incident.

The BGPNY had been conceived nearly forty years ago to boost agriculture in Bhagalpur and adjoining Jharkhand, utilising the water of the Ganga. Officials said the latest breach was likely to further delay the project, whose costs had spiraled from Rs 13.77 crore to Rs 389 crore. The project would serve 27,603 hectares of land, 22,716 of which would be in Bihar.

Terming the incident as "unfortunate", principal secretary of water resources department Arun Kumar Singh told reporters at Kahalgaon that the canal would be repaired and all technical flaws removed within two months. He said an underpass of the NTPC over which the canal was passing through could be one of the reasons for the breach.

When reached for comments, group general manager of NTPC's Kahalgaon unit Rakesh Samuel said the underpass could not have been constructed without obtaining a no-objection certificate from authorities concerned. "We are looking into the papers and design of the underpass. At present, I cannot speak more on the matter," Samuel told .