Bihar: And they all came tumbling down

Meme makers and cartoonists having a field day over the collapse of bridges in Bihar seem to have missed the irony of chief minister Nitish Kumar being an engineer. Possibly the only chief minister of the state thus far with an engineering degree (albeit in electrical not civil or structural engineering).

One such cartoon shows the CM telling Prime Minister Modi, "I’m not coming there to meet you…" "Why?" asks the aggrieved PM. "I’m taking a U-turn," says the CM, to which the PM says, "WHY??" Because… (you guessed it) there’s a bridge ahead! Another much-circulated meme has a lady scooting off a two-wheeler as she suspects her husband plans to bump her off by the simple expedient of driving her over a bridge.

Bridge collapses are not unheard of in the state. But with as many as 12 falling down in 17 days (the numbers vary depending on where you seek them), the government has been sufficiently embarrassed into ordering the suspension of several engineers and an inquiry.

NDA leaders, especially those from the BJP, have been busy pointing fingers at past governments (Congress and RJD), neatly overlooking the fact that barring three out of 19 years, it’s the BJP and its NDA ally JD(U) that has been in government since 2005. The only BJP leader who has candidly said he gets tense every time his vehicle passes over a bridge or a flyover is Nikhil Anand. He wants an audit, followed by blacklisting of contractors and engineers.

The use of sub-standard material and sand is a perennial sore point, with contractors blaming the prevailing ‘commission raj’ in the state for the poor construction of bridges. Engineers are also an aggrieved lot. Many of the projects, they point out, are fast-tracked to enable political leaders to ‘inaugurate’ them ahead of one election or the other. Project engineers are pressured to complete them in absurdly short time-frames, leading to ill-advised short-cuts.

The government recently suspended 11 engineers, holding them responsible for the collapse of bridges in Saran and Siwan districts. They were charged with not taking proper care while desilting and dredging the rivers. Engineers say they are being made scapegoats as desilting and dredging have little to do with them or the collapse of the bridges, most of which were built after November 2005.

That, however, is only part of the story. The bridge at Sultanganj is being built at a cost of Rs 1,710 crore — since 2014. Portions of this bridge have collapsed two or three times in as many years. The construction contract was given to a family-owned firm in Haryana and the design consultancy was provided by a Canadian company.

IIT Roorkee, which was brought in for an audit, had reportedly pointed out serious design and structural defects. Despite various complaints against the Haryana firm at different stages, no action was taken. Instead, the same firm bagged several contracts from both the state government and the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India).

Smaller bridges, known in the state as pulias as opposed to the bigger puls, are often constructed at the local level by rural engineering and other departments, at a cost of less than Rs 1 crore. Several of these pulias have also collapsed in recent weeks, drawing attention to maintenance issues. A ‘maintenance policy’, in the works for the last decade, has now been revived in a tacit admission that regular inspections were not being carried out in the absence of accountability.

Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, however, blamed "excessive and unprecedented" rain, disregarding the fact that bridges had started coming down before the late arrival of the monsoon towards the end of June, and no district was officially declared ‘flood affected’ till the first week of July.

Don’t write off the JD(U) yet

At a time when most commentators had written off the Janata Dal (United), the party is showing signs of reinventing itself. Nitish Kumar — who in the past had sent stalwarts such as George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav, RCP Singh and Lallan Singh to the dog house — is apparently firewalling, if not rebuilding the party.

First, at its national executive meeting at the end of June, the party appointed Sanjay Jha (55) as its working president. Ten days later, the party inducted former IAS officer Manish Verma (50), a close confidant of chief minister Nitish Kumar and a fellow Kurmi, into the party. Add to this the buzz within the party that the chief minister’s old friend, Saryu Roy (73), an independent MLA and former BJP minister from Jharkhand, is going to spearhead the JD(U)’s campaign in the Assembly election later this year.

Sanjay Jha was closely associated with the late BJP leader Arun Jaitley in Delhi. Nitish Kumar, who shared a warm relationship with Jaitley, grew to trust Jha, a JNU graduate, who joined the party in 2012. Jha became a member of the legislative council and was made a minister before getting nominated to the Rajya Sabha in February this year.

He did not desert Nitish Kumar either in 2013, when he first parted company with the BJP, or in 2022 when he left the NDA for the second time. Indeed, he is seen as having been instrumental for Nitish Kumar and the JD(U)’s return to the NDA. In 2019, however, when Nitish wanted the BJP to concede the Darbhanga Lok Sabha seat for Jha to contest, the BJP had refused.

Manish Verma, a former IAS officer of the Odisha cadre, is another Nitish Kumar loyalist. Hailing from the chief minister’s home district, Nalanda, his services were transferred to Bihar in 2012 at the request of the chief minister by the then UPA government at the Centre.

However, when he was being repatriated back to Odisha in 2018 after completing five years on deputation, Verma opted for voluntary retirement. Why he waited six years before formally joining the party is still not known. However, he clearly enjoys the confidence of the chief minister and is the man to watch in the state.

Saryu Roy, though from the RSS and close to K.N. Govindacharya, has also stood by Nitish Kumar through thick and thin. Ironically, both Roy and Kumar were instrumental in ensuring Lalu Prasad Yadav’s victory in the election for the leader of the Janata Dal Legislature Party in 1989, paving the way for him to become the chief minister. Both fell out with Lalu Prasad and went their separate ways.

Roy remained in the BJP and shifted his base to Jharkhand when the state was created in 2000. He was one of the petitioners in the high court for a CBI inquiry into the fodder scam. In Jharkhand, he was rewarded with a ministerial post before he fell out with chief ministers Babulal Marandi and Raghubar Das. Roy contested as an independent candidate and defeated Das in the last Assembly election, after which Das was moved to Odisha as governor. Originally a Rajput from Buxar, with a reputation for integrity, Saryu Roy is known for his political insights and administrative knowledge.

Saryu and Nitish stayed in touch. Following a meeting between them last month, speculation has intensified that he is joining the JD(U) as the party’s face in the Jharkhand election later this year. One of the general secretaries of JD(U) told this correspondent, “Roy’s services may be useful to bargain hard with the BJP in Jharkhand and maybe even in Bihar.”