The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation administration (BMC) has now decided to investigate the Gokhale Bridge and Barfiwala Bridge misalignment. Additional Commissioner Amit Saini has been appointed for the same. The senior officials of the civic body investigation will be done to prevent such misalignments in near future. Meanwhile, officials warned that the contractor who delayed bringing the bridge girders would also be fined.
Although one side of the Gokhale bridge was opened on February 26, motorists are yet to get relief. Barfiwala Bridge and Gokhale Bridge in Andheri West have been lowered, and Barfiwala Bridge has been closed due to a gap of two metres in the bridge. So the traffic is not running smooth through the Gokhale bridge as it used to be. Also, due to this, the planning of the municipality has become a laughing stock and is being criticised on social media as well. Therefore, there was a demand to investigate the matter and determine the responsibility of the officials. According to this, the BMC Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani indicated to investigate the matter. However, the municipal administration has decided to prepare a fact-finding report to find out exactly why the planning failed in this case.
The BMC has already explained that this gap has been created due to the increase in the height of the bridges on the railway by the railway administration. Also, the administration also says that since the Barfiwala bridge is built by MSRDC, the administration does not have the information about it. Therefore, it is not that the municipal administration was not aware of the fact that there was a gap between these two bridges, but the authorities at that time took a stand that first Gokhale Bridge would be started and then a decision would be taken about Barfiwala Bridge. Therefore, in this case there is no financial impact but questions about foresight or decision making ability have arisen.
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The municipal officials said that the main objective of this fact-finding report is to determine what should be done to prevent this from happening again. In this case, the officials say that the planning failed due to the fact that MSRDC did not provide information about the bridge and several months were wasted.
The BMC has consulted IIT mumbai and VGTI to connect Gokhale Bridge and Barfiwala Bridge. According to his report, the work is going on to level these two bridges by jacking them and pulling up a portion of the bridge. This work is targeted to be completed by June 30.
Meanwhile, the spare parts of the second girder of the Gokhale bridge have been delayed in arriving in Mumbai and due to this, the schedule for the construction of the other side of the bridge is going to be delayed. The deadline for erecting the beam at the end of May has to be postponed. The BMC has taken the matter of delay in the arrival of the beam seriously and the municipal officials informed that the contractor will be fined in this case.
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