Vehicles ply on the makeshift bridge before traffic movement was suspended on Thursday. Picture by Chandan Kumar

Patna, July 10: The traffic movement on the makeshift bridge at Dumri Ghat across the Kosi has been suspended from last Thursday as a precautionary measure.

The bridge was made out of bounds for public within a month of its inauguration because the water of Bagmati, which meets the Kosi near the southern end of the bridge, was posing threat to a part of the structure.

“The condition of the makeshift bridge is perfectly alright but we have stopped the movement of vehicles as a precautionary measure. The traffic movement would be allowed as soon as the erosion pressure by river Bagmati near few pillars of the bridge would reduce,” road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav told The Telegraph.

Managing director of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam (BRPNN) A.K. Jha said: “Our engineers are keeping a close watch on the flow of river Bagmati, as the strong current of its water has caused rapid erosion between the third and the sixth span of the bridge.”

BRPNN had provided Rs 15 crore from its profit under corporate social responsibility scheme for the construction of this 566m long and 3.75m wide bridge that has 94 spans.

Jha said senior BRPNN engineers were camping at the bridge site to ensure no damage was done to the structure.

The makeshift bridge is a sheet pile bridge made of steel. Under this technique, hollow pipes are sunk 12m deep into the riverbed. Once the sinking process is over, the hollow pipe is filled with sand and an iron sheet is placed over the pipe. Initially, only the movement of light vehicles was allowed on the temporary structure.

The bridge was opened for public use on June 10 this year, ending a seven-month-long wait of around 50 lakh residents of Kosi region that includes Saharsa, Madhepura and Supaul districts.

To use the bridge again, the people of the Kosi region would have to wait for the current of river Bagmati to become mild, as the repairing work on BP Mandal Bridge (Dumri Ghat) across river Kosi does not look feasible in the near future.

The construction of this makeshift bridge was necessitated because BP Mandal Bridge on river Kosi had been closed as a part of the bridge sunk into the river. Opened for public use in 1986, the fault in BP Mandal Bridge was first detected in August last year. It was found that the expansion point near the 16th pillar of the bridge had increased unexpectedly.