Bhagalpur, Dec. 5: Dilapidated roads and rising trend of mishaps are major hurdles coming in the way of Bhagalpur become a smart city.

Police records state more than 250 road mishap deaths have occurred in the past three years. In 2016, over 75 road mishap deaths have already been reported from Bhagalpur with a long list of injured people.

The 69-km National Highway-80, which passes through Bhagalpur, has potholes that can compete with each other when it comes to depth and radius. The devastating floods of Ganga in last August had further damaged the NH-80 at many places. Not only NH-80, almost all roads, including lanes inside the city, are badly damaged and inviting accidents regularly.

"The rickshaw on which I was returning from the market with my mother-in-law turned turtle because of a pothole at Katchari Chowk. My mother-in-law, 70, had factures on the left leg and left hand. I was injured too," said Manju Mishra, 31, a homemaker at Tilka Manjhi.

"The Katchari Chowk is the most vulnerable. Ironically, it is the heart of the city and all district, police and judiciary officials take the damaged road everyday to attend office. But none of them took any action," said Manju.

Vikramshila bridge across river Ganga, the approach road to the Vikramshila bridge, some stretches of the state highway from Bhagalpur to Jagdishpur on the Bhagalpur-Dumka/Deoghar Road and Gorachouki-Kazrali on Bhagalpur-Amarapur Road, Champa bridge-Dogacchi and Nathnagar-Parvatti, Zero mile-Sabour and Ghantaghar-Ultapull on NH-80 are the accident prone areas where average 10-12 road mishap deaths are reported every month.

Manoj Kumar, the senior superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, blamed the dilapidated roads as one of the reasons behind the accidents. He also blamed reckless driving as another important cause of accident here.

"We have deputed personnel in several spots where road mishaps occur frequently, but if the drivers are not cautious, how can we stop it?" he asked.

Officials maintaining the NH-80 division of Bhagalpur said the road repair work is being done on a war-footing between Bhagalpur and Pirpainty. Keeping in view the proposed visit of President of India at Vikramshila and Gurudham in Banka on November 26-27, the repair work was initiated on the NH-80 and state highway - Bhagalpur-Dumka/Deoghar.

"Though his visit has been deferred, we are continuing with the repair work," said Lakshminarayan Singh, the superintending engineer of NH-80, Bhagalpur division.

But many alleged that the temporary repairing work is not the solution to the problem.

"Neither the roads were constructed nor the present repairing work was done while keeping in view the load on it. On an average 42,000 heavy vehicles ply on NH-80 daily but no one bothers to focus on the load resulting in the damage in a very short time," said Mohammad Aslam, an autorickshaw driver who plies his vehicle from Sabour to Ghogha on NH-80.

The roads across the Ganga were repaired but since all the joints of the bridge are in a damaged condition, accidents became a common phenomena here.

"When accidents occur or when a heavy vehicle breaks down on the bridge, it leads to heavy jam. This has a rippling effect on the city traffic movement," said Sailendra Kumar, a former BJP MLA from Bihpur.

The approach road of the bridge - a 10.6-km stretch from Bhagalpur zero mile to Naugachia zero mile -was repaired spending Rs 23 crore seven months back. "That too is showing signs of damaged at many places posing threats to the traffic movement," Sailendra said.