Morbi: The Gujarat police on Friday submitted a 1,262-page charge sheet in the Morbi bridge collapse case and named Oreva Group director Jaysukh Patel as prime accused.
Rajkot range Inspector General of Police Ashok Yadav told media that the charge sheet is filed against 10 accused, of which nine are arrested while the director is absconding.
Officer said managers Deepak Parekh, Dinesh Dave, three security guards, two ticket clerks and as many private contract workers have been arrested and are in judicial custody.
Patel has moved anticipatory bail application.
Major allegation against Oreva group is that without proper fitness certificate whether the suspension bridge is fit for public or not, the company opened it for visitors.
Nagarpalika said: “We have not issued any fitness certificate to the company, and it has also not informed us that it is opening the suspension bridge for visitors.”
Morbi: The Morbi municipality has appealed to the Gujarat government to return documents seized by a special investigation team (SIT) probing the collapse of a bridge in the town so it could respond to the government’s show-cause notice asking why the civic body should not be dissolved over the tragedy, which claimed 135 lives.
All the documents are with the government-appointed SIT and the Morbi municipality does not have any document, an official from the civic body has said.
The British-era suspension bridge on the Machchhu river in Morbi collapsed on October 30, 2022. The Gujarat government last week issued a show-cause notice to the Morbi municipality asking why it should not be dissolved for failing to discharge its duties.
In the notice, the state Urban Development Department directed the civic body to submit a written clarification in the form of a general body resolution by January 25.
The bridge was maintained and operated by the Oreva Group as per an agreement signed with the Morbi municipality. The 52-member Morbi municipality held a meeting on Monday and passed a resolution urging the government to return documents seized by the (government-appointed) SIT so it could respond to the government’s show-cause notice, the civic body’s vice president, Jayrajsinh Jadeja, told reporters after the meeting.
All the 52 elected representatives of the Morbi Municipality are from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is in power in the state.
“Since all the documents are with the SIT and the Morbi municipality does not have any document, the municipality passed a resolution urging the government to return them as soon as possible so that it could reply to its notice,” Jadeja said.
In the notice, the Urban Development Department said the previous contract to operate the bridge expired in 2017.
Between 2018 and 2020, the Oreva Group had written several letters to the Morbi municipality warning about the dilapidated condition of the bridge and also cautioned that a serious accident may occur if the bridge remains open to the public in such a condition.
However, the civic body did not take cognizance of such warnings by the company, the notice said.
Moreover, the municipality did not take any concrete action to take over the bridge from the company in 2017 after the completion of the contract and remained inactive despite knowing the situation of the bridge, it said.
Notably, the state government had on December 13 told the Gujarat High Court, which took cognisance of the tragedy on its own and registered a public interest litigation (PIL), that it had decided to dissolve the municipality. The court had turned down the plea of the civic body members to be impleaded as a party in the case.
Nine persons, including four employees of Ajanta Manufacturing (Oreva Group), have been arrested so far in the case. They include two managers and as many ticket booking clerks of the Oreva Group that was managing the British-era bridge.
The SIT had cited several lapses on part of the Oreva Group in repairs, maintenance and operation of the carriageway. A Gujarat court last week also issued an arrest warrant against Jaysukh Patel, managing director of the Oreva Group, after getting an application for the same from police under section 70 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Patel, who is not named as an accused in the FIR, had moved the Morbi sessions court on January 20 for anticipatory bail fearing arrest in the bridge collapse case. The hearing was adjourned till February 1 as the public prosecutor was not present.
A historic Prague railway bridge, whose importance to the city’s landscape has been compared to the Eiffel tower in Paris, has been earmarked for demolition in a move denounced by architects and preservationists.
The much-photographed Vyšehrad bridge – instantly recognisable for its parabolic lattice steel structure – is unfit to carry an anticipated rising volume of rail traffic, claims Czech Railways, which plans to replace it with a modern structure.
Prague railway
The proposal has triggered an emotive backlash from local campaigners and Prague city council, who want the original, which has earned national monument status, to be preserved. A petition pleading for the 120-year-old structure to be saved attracted more than 6,000 signatures after the railways administration published plans for a replacement.
The outcry has prompted the Czech transport minister, Martin Kupka, to call a special meeting of bridge engineers and the railways administration in an effort to find a solution.
Designed by František Prášil, a Czech engineer of the late Habsburg era, the bridge was built in 1901 and spans the Vltava river, carrying mainline trains between Prague and other European cities, including Munich. It lies within an area designated a Unesco world heritage site in 1992, and has become a favourite landmark among walkers and cyclists, who use two pedestrian walkways on either side of the bridge.
But the railways administration insists that corrosion means that repairing and maintaining it as a busy transport artery is too complicated and expensive, amid proposals to add an extra line to the existing two tracks and build a new local railway station nearby.
Critics counter that its dilapidated state is a result of the administration’s failure to prioritise repairs since the bridge was granted national monument status in 2004.
A competition among Czech architects to design a replacement resulted in a more modern blueprint, loosely based on the existing bridge, being chosen last November.
‘The people of Prague cannot imagine the city without the bridge,’ said Prague’s deputy mayor, Adam Scheinher. Photograph: Marketa Novakova/Alamy
But claims that the bridge is beyond repair have been contradicted. Feasibility studies commissioned by Prague city council concluded that preservation was “technically feasible” and that the structure had “sufficient structural capacity to carry future train traffic, including higher trainloads and higher train frequencies”.
Adam Scheinherr, Prague’s deputy mayor responsible for the city’s transport infrastructure and cultural landmarks, said: “What’s most important about the bridge is that it belongs to the panorama of Prague, and the people of Prague cannot imagine the city without it. When you see movies set in Prague, the railway bridge is nearly always there.”
Richard Biegel, chairman of the Club for Old Prague preservation group and an architectural historian at the city’s Charles university, said the railway administration’s plans betrayed “a lack of empathy”.
“It’s part of something that’s emblematic for Prague,” he said. “The importance of the bridge for Prague is like that of the Eiffel tower for Paris. It’s also important as a marker of the period of the industrial revolution in the city.”
Jan Nevola, spokesperson for the railways administration, said a new bridge was needed because renovating the existing one was “unrealistic”.
“Its condition is so bad that it would essentially be a replica made up of more than 60% new parts,” he said. “At the same time, this approach is much more costly, will not allow an increase in traffic and would only extend the lifetime by several decades.”
Ian Firth, a leading structural engineer who specialises in bridge design, co-authored a 2021 report recommending retaining the structure either as a pedestrian or one-track rail facility, while possibly moving it 50 metres to stand alongside a new, unobtrusive rail bridge.
“They weren’t interested. Their minds were already made up,” Firth said. “But to chuck away the existing bridge is a terrible shame because it’s a marvellous piece of work. Imagine the outcry around the world if Tower Bridge in London was declared unfit for purpose and the powers that be decided to demolish it and build something else. This is the same scenario.
“We are in the middle of a climate emergency, and we have a responsibility not to just throw things away and start building new things, which is environmentally wasteful.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Morbi: Managing Director of Ajanta Manufacturing Ltd, the firm which was given contract for operation and maintenance of a suspension bridge in Gujarat’s Morbi town that collapsed on October 30 last year killing 135 people, has moved a court here for anticipatory bail fearing arrest in the case.
Jaysukh Patel, moved the anticipatory bail plea in the sessions court in Morbi fearing arrest in the bridge collapse case, sources said.
The plea is likely to be heard on Saturday, they said.
Nine persons, including four employees of Ajanta Manufacturing (Oreva Group), have been arrested so far in the case. They included two managers and an equal number of ticket booking clerks of the Oreva Group that was managing the British-era bridge.
Patel’s name was not included in the first information report (FIR) filed by the police soon after the tragedy.
Police sources said they will file a charge-sheet in the case before January 30.
The suspension bridge on the Machchhu river was being maintained and operated by the Oreva Group as per an agreement signed with Morbi municipality.
Patel’s move comes even as the Gujarat government has issued a show-cause notice to the local municipality asking why it should not be dissolved for failing to discharge its duties that led to the tragedy.
A government-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) had cited, among other things, several lapses on part of the Oreva Group in repairs, maintenance and operation of the carriageway.
The lapses cited by the special probe team included no restriction on the number of persons accessing the bridge, no curb on sale of tickets, leading to unrestricted movement on the bridge and carrying out repairs without consulting experts.
