Agartala, Feb. 27: One of the 10 minarets of Neer Mahal, which represents a blend of Islamic and Hindu architectural design, has collapsed during renovation.

The Northeast's lone water palace, Neer Mahal was built by Tripura's last king Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya in 1930 . The king had drawn inspiration from the lake palace in Rajasthan's Udaipur to have the Neer Mahal built by Martin-Burn construction company as a summer resort.

Over the decades, it grew into a popular tourist destination.

Two labourers, Bilwa Das, 51, and Bakulrani Biswas, 44, sustained injuries and were shifted to Melaghar hospital yesterday.

A steady water area in the Rudra Sagar lake, 55km southwest of Agartala, because of siltation, encroachment and dewatering of the lake by dwellers around it, continue to pose a threat to Neer Mahal.

The Tripura government began constructing a ring road to maintain the necessary water level in the lake and awarded the retrofitting and renovation work to a construction firm from outside the state.

'A worse tragedy would have resulted in case the labourers had stayed on at the spot,' said Bikash Chandra Malakar, an assistant caretaker in Sagar Mahal, a popular tourist resort built on the bank of Rudra Sagar lake. Malakar said the firm had outsourced part of the renovation work to local sub-contractors and the quality of work had suffered.

'According to local experienced contractors, the renovation work will not last long; by allowing encroachment on the lake, the state government has already done a big damage to the lake palace and now with the reduced water level and area and poor retrofitting and renovation work, the very existence of Neer Mahal may be at stake,' said Malakar.

Many historically important buildings and monuments have been dismantled to build new structures for public purposes in Tripura. The latest was the erstwhile sprawling royal stable behind Ujjayanta palace in the heart of Agartala. A stadium named after Swami Vivekananda has come up in its place.

The Ujjayanta palace, a large part of which now accommodates the state museum, was retrofitted by a Mumbai-based construction firm a few years back.