The road construction department is planning to come up with a bridge maintenance policy.

Speaking on the occasion of 39th foundation day of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam (BRPNN) on Sunday in the presence of chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, road construction minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh claimed that Bihar would be the first state in the country to have a bridge maintenance policy on the lines of the recently introduced road maintenance policy. Manjhi inaugurated 184 small and medium bridges and laid the foundation stone for another 41 schemes on the occasion.

The bridges inaugurated on Sunday have been constructed in different places, including a 608m-long reinforced concrete cement (RCC) bridge over Burner river in Jamui district, a 150m bridge across Paimar river at Goga village in Gaya and another 432-metre-long high-level bridge over Kareh river in Darbhanga district.

Lauding BRPNN — an undertaking of the road construction department — for increasing its turnover from Rs 42.62 crore in the year 2004-05 to Rs 1,400 crore in the last fiscal (2013-14), Manjhi said: “Former chief minister Nitish Kumar had a vision of developing such a network in the state in which people could reach Patna in six hours and BRPNN has made a significant contribution to it. The work of BRPNN has played a major role in the development of the state, for which all its officers and employees should be appreciated.” The chief minister felicitated some of the officials of BRPNN for completing some projects within the stipulated deadline. Singh, the road construction minister, said other public sector undertakings in the state should take lessons from the success story of BRPNN. “It has achieved several goals in the past eight years and the other public sector undertakings should work with similar efficiency. Also, I would like to urge the BRPNN officials to put more emphasis on adopting modern technologies in bridge construction to save time as well as money,” said Singh. Arun Kumar Singh, the principal secretary of the road construction department, said the unit was working on around 650 schemes at present utilising an estimated outlay of Rs 6,400 crore. Few of its major ongoing projects include the four-lane flyover over Bailey Road in Patna with an estimated outlay of Rs 298.66 crore, a 1.84-km-long bridge over Kosi at Vijay Ghat, connecting Madhepura and Bhagalpur via Naugachia, and another 4-km-long four-lane bridge on the Ganga, connecting Ara and Chhapra.

Since 2005, BRPNN has completed work on 1,300 bridges, including 300 big bridges, till date. As many as 627 bridges are at the under-construction stage. One of the most ambitious projects of BRPNN is the construction of a 2-km-long Baluaha Ghat bridge in Saharsa over the Kosi at an expenditure of Rs 531.15 crore.

BRPNN has also developed the International Convention Centre in Rajgir spread over an area of two acres with an estimated outlay of Rs 33 crore.