Karnataka pays the price for BSNL’s blunder

National Highway 13 (between Mangalore and Hospet) is not in a good shape, thanks to the contractor employed by the BSNL, whose inferior cable-laying technology has destroyed a 110-year-old bridge, cutting off the traffic on the highway.
In the last four months, motorists heading in that direction had to suffer inconvenience, not to mention the `1 crore loss to the state exchequer.
Chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda has announced a grant of `1 crore to re-build the bridge.
According to the engineers in the Mangalore division of the state national highways department, the bridge at Bollechchar was built by the British 110 years ago. The arched bridge managed to withstand heavy traffic, and based on the material strength analysis of the bridge, it could have rendered trouble-free service for several more years.
The BSNL contractor had used heavy digging machinery to lay the cables, which dislodged the key stone on the arch and destabilised the span of the bridge. “No sane engineer would use heavy machinery to dig up near an old bridge,” they said.
The state national highways, however, had used private land to reconnect the highway but without proper acquisition. This had resulted in the land owners taking out an agitation, pushing the highway users into a quandary. The motorists now have to take a 12-km diversion to get back to the highway. For the last four months, lakhs of motorists have spent additional fuel and suffered extreme discomfort due to this.
But the government has chosen to let the BSNL and the errant contractor go scot-free, without claiming any compensation. Neither the local MLA Abhayachandra Jain nor zilla panchayat member Jagadish Adhikari has taken action against the offenders.