Bhubaneswar: Union petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday blamed the Naveen Patnaik government for the collapse of the Bomikhal bridge.

Pradhan visited the spot where the retaining wall of the under-construction Bomikhal overbridge collapsed late on Thursday.

A construction worker was killed and another was severely injured.

After visiting the accident site, the Union minister said: "The government is inefficient as it did not take concrete measures even after the first mishap. Rather the suspended officials were reinstated and the blacklisted executing agency was allowed to continue with the work."

"This is a very serious issue. The bridge collapsed for the second time. Government should order an impartial probe to find out the reasons why mishaps are taking place frequently. A probe should be conducted by a a reliable agency like IIT Chennai which has the required expertise in civil engineering to ascertain the quality of the construction work," said Pradhan.

The Union minister also questioned as to why a black listed company was awarded the work again. The first mishap had taken place on the bridge on September 10 last year in which one person was killed and several others had been injured, following the construction agency Panda Infra was blacklisted.

Opposition sees the nexus of a ruling party MLA with the company as the secretary of the works department has got an extension even though the cost of the project escalated to Rs 28 crore from Rs 14 crore and its deadline was first extended by three years from 2014 to 2017 and later stretched to March 2018.

The ruling party's senior MLA and former minister Damodar Rout took a dig at the government on the issue. " The contractor who is executing the bridge work here, has also taken up the bridge construction work at Jatani. People in Jatani had shown me video about the low quality of work being executed there. I had also told the departmental secretary. The same allegation is still pouring in."