BHOPAL: The last incident of bridge collapse in Bhopal was in October 2015 when the projected portion of Bharat Talkies overbridge collapsed late in the night, killing a couple sleeping beneath it.It could have been worse had the bridge collapsed during the day when the road is abuzz with traffic. PWD officials concede that the bridge had caved in because it was old and rusty. The bridge, perhaps the oldest in Bhopal, has been re-built and is maintained by the PWD. The PWD engineers in the bridge division said that safety audit of the bridges maintained by them is carried out twice a year -- before and after the monsoon ."If the bridge is found unsafe, we even recommend its demolition, or suggest to divert the traffic so as to reduce the burden and avert a collapse," said a top engineer of PWD (bridge section).Referring to Thursday's FoB collapse in Mumbai, he added: "It happened because rafters horizontally fitted to the bridge came off. Perhaps because the welding was weak and no one paid heed. Besides this, FoBs are constructed for a certian footfall at one time. If a foot overbridge can take 25 people at a time, but for some reason 100 people get on the bridge, it is likely to collapse. " FoBs at Jyoti Talkies and ISBT in Bhopal are hardly used, he pointed out.PWD was responsible for maintenance of the two overbridges- Chetak Bridge near Jyoti Talkies and Bharat Talkies overbridge and both are fine, said the engineer. "We have recently converted Chetak Bridge into a six-lane bridge and Bharat Talkies overbridge was also strengthened after the 2015 accident," he added. Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) also looks after maintenance of two bridges- Cable Stay Bridge and Veer Savarkar Setu. Both the bridges are newly-built and their maintenance, as of now, is looked after by the companies that constructed it, said O P Bhardwaj, city engineer, BMC.Capital Project Administration (CPA) and BMC's have conflicting views on who maintains the bridges constructed under Bhoj Wetland scheme. The Bhadbhada overbridge and VIP Road overbridge constructed by CPA are being maintained by no one, it seems.While CPA superintendent engineer Jawahar Singh said that the two bridges were handed over to the BMC for maintenance, Bhardwaj maintained that the BMC only looks after the bridges constructed by it."Since the bridges were constructed under Bhoj Wetland Scheme, they were handed over to the BMC for maintenance," added Jawahar Singh. On the other hand, Bhardwaj said: "We are not responsible for maintenance of the bridges constructed by the CPA. whosoever constructs the bridge, maintains it." "Safety of bridges in Bhopal is not so big a concern as of now because all of them, except Bharat Talkies overbridge, have been commissioned recently and anything like collapse is out of question," added Bhardwaj.

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