Indian bridge takes 55 years to complete

According to a BBC report, the people of West Bengal recently celebrated the opening of the 454 meter Torsha river bridge on Highway 31 near the Ghoksadanga-Pundibari area. Few were aware that it had taken 55 years for the project to be completed owing to red tape, litigation and natural disasters.

A junior engineer, Kripasindhu Rakshit, made the first survey of the area for the bridge in 1953. "The survey for the bridge over Torsha and the approach road was my first assignment as a junior engineer in the Development (Roads) Directorate - after the year I joined service in 1952," Mr Rakshit recently wrote.

Apparently nothing more happened until the 1980s when "the central government asked us to go for another set of survey, soil testing, design and give a cost estimate".

This could qualify in the Guinness Book of Records, surpassing the construction time time of the Wuhan Bridge over the Yangtse River which started around 1913 and was completed in 1957.

As the saying goes, better late than never, and one hopes that the bridge has been constructed soundly so that there will be no litigation similar to that pending over the great Jamuna Bridge in neighbouring Bangladesh.