The old bridge and the incomplete one. Picture by Satananda Bhattacharjee

Aug. 8: As the host of the popular television series Kaun Banega Crorepati, Amitabh Bachchan had once asked a contestant this question: which is the first bridge in the country to have a single passage for trains and vehicles?

The contestant may not have known the answer but had the benefit of choosing — or making a wild guess, if you please — from the four options on his computer screen. Sadly, for people who have to cross the century-old Katakhal rail-cum-road bridge by car or train, there is no way of guessing when this dilapidated concrete, metal and wooden piece of history will go down in a heap.

Sources said a joint team of experts from the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and Northeast Frontier Railway did an on-the-spot assessment recently and advised the government to close the bridge to vehicular traffic for at least a month so that repairs could be carried out.

Built by the British, the rail-cum-road bridge connects Silchar, Mizoram and parts of Manipur with the rest of the state. Thousands of trucks, buses and private vehicles cross the bridge everyday. Commuters last month alerted the authorities to the wobbly condition of the bridge when they spotted a concrete pillar tilting towards the Katakhal river.

Sources in NF Railway said a Rs 30-lakh plan had been drawn up to repair the pillars. “But it is not a permanent solution and there must be some other alternative arrangement to restore surface communication,” said a railway official.

NF Railway is planning to shift the rail track from this bridge to the nearby broad-gauge bridge, which is still under construction. However, the BRO has yet to receive a no-objection certificate from the railway office for the construction of an overbridge. The BRO will have to lay a 650-metre road and reconstruct a 225-metre stretch, both of which will take a long time to complete.

Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev said he spoke to Union surface transport minister T.R. Balu and was assured that the Centre would accord priority to the task of “normalising communication” on National Highway 53.

Dev is also understood to have written to North Eastern Council chairman P.R. Kyndiah, who is also the DoNER minister, to sanction money for the reconstruction of the Silchar-Kalain NEC road via Rani in view of the precarious condition of the Katakhal rail-cum-road bridge.

Residents of the Barak Valley have been demanding an alternative road since Independence, but a no-objection certificate from NF Railway remains pending.

Thousands of vehicles remain stranded on both sides of the bridge whenever any train passes through the bridge.

“The state of this bridge reveals that the government has not taken any initiative to develop the Barak Valley and we have to make do with British-era infrastructure,” a commuter said.

He also accused elected representatives of the valley of “never strongly raising the issue in Parliament”.