Delay in releasing funds has stalled construction work on two pontoon bridges across the river Ganga.

The adjacent bridges will connect Patna and Hajipur. The approach road from Patna will start from Alamganj Police station and the one from Hajipur will start from Gandhi Setu police station. There will be one approach road from each direction. The plan is to reduce the load on Gandhi Setu.

The bridge is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 90 crore and is facing fund hurdles. No work has been carried out in the month of May.

Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Ltd (BRPNNL), the nodal agency for the project, said funds were not released by the road construction department yet and this had forced the work to stop.

Construction work is going on at two places - one at pillar number one near Hajipur and the other at Didarganj area. No work has been carried out in the two places after April.

BRPNNL hired Shristhi Developers, a private agency, to complete the work but the company made only 66 of the 246 proposed pontoon bridges and stopped work because of paucity of funds.

"We were given Rs 2 crore this January to start work and we requested BRPNNL to release the rest of the money so that work could go smoothly," a senior official at Shristhi Developers told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity. "We did not receive the funds on time and this caused the work to stop. We could not pay our engineers and labourers their wages."

The work was supposed to be completed by December 2016. The delay will extend the deadline by two to three months. The agency said at least 15 more bridges could have been made if payment was done on time.

Once the bridge is completed, it will reduce the load of traffic on Gandhi Setu because it is designed for small vehicle and SUVs. It will be a boon for commuters, as traffic jams on Gandhi Setu is a daily affair.

A pontoon is a hollow, cylindrical steel structure that floats on water. These are joined to form a bridge.

A BRPNNL official accepted that the project will miss its deadline. "The project will be delayed because the agency stopped working because no funds were released," he said. "We have informed the road construction department. An amount of Rs 3 crore will be released next week.

The official, however, did not reveal the reason that caused the delay in fund release.