A portion of an under-construction bridge across the Manair River in Telangana’s Peddapalli district collapsed on the intervening night of Monday (22nd April) and Tuesday (23rd April), allegedly owing to bad weather and strong winds. There were no casualties in the incident, which occurred amid heavy rainfall and strong winds in the area. The bridge was being built to connect the Peddapalli and Bhupalpally districts.
“Luckily, a marriage party of 65 people on a bus passed by just one minute earlier and escaped being crushed by the concrete,” said Sirikonda Bakka Rao, sarpanch of Odedu village in Peddapalli district to NDTV. The incident came to the fore after some of the villagers alerted police about the incident on Tuesday.
In 2016, Telangana Assembly Speaker S Madhusudhana Chary and local MLA Putta Madhu inaugurated the one-kilometre-long bridge across the Manair river, which cost approximately Rs 49 crore.
The project was scheduled to be completed in a year and would shorten the distance between three towns – Manthani, Parakal, and Jammikunta, by around 50 kilometres. The bridge was intended to connect Garmillapallu in Tekumatla mandal, Bhupalpalli, to Odededu in Peddapalli.
According to locals, the contractor ceased working after a year or two because he was under pressure for commissions and the government failed to pay his dues. “The same contractor had built a bridge in Vemulawada that was washed away during heavy rain in 2021,” Rao added.
Meanwhile, locals use a temporary route under the bridge to commute between the two districts.
