Sambalpur, Sept. 10: Traffic on the national highway No. 49, connecting with Mumbai and Calcutta, was disrupted after a bridge over the Bengasua Nullah caved in following heavy downpour today.

The nullah is located around 5 kilometres away from the Deogarh district headquarters town.

Vehicles remained stranded on either side of road that joined the collapsed bridge.

The executive engineer of Deogarh national highway division, Chittaranjan Dash, said: "The bridge was in a good condition. But, after the downpour, a pier of the bridge got displaced due to sudden and heavy flow of water in the nullah, as a result of which the bridge collapsed. The reconstruction of the bridge will take time. We have decided to built a diversion road to facilitate the movement of vehicles on the national highway."

"The work on the diversion road will start shortly and will take at least seven days to complete. The vehicles plying on the National Highway will have to take a detour during this period," said Dash.

"We have informed police and district administration about the bridge collapse," Dash said.

He also said that the bridge was very old and that was why it had collapsed in the heavy rainfall.

The district emergency officer of Deogarh, Basant Kumar Dash, said: "There was heavy rainfall in Deogarh in the past 24 hours. While the average rainfall in the district between 8.30am on Friday and 8.30am on Saturday was 102mm, Deogarh recorded 195.04mm rainfall in total during this time."

The disruption of traffic caused severe inconvenience to the commuters. Several people were seen taking alternative routes to reach their destinations.

A resident of Deogarh town, Ashok Nanda, said: "The bridge collapse has disrupted one of the busiest roads of the state that connects with Mumbai and Calcutta. Thousands of vehicles ply on the road every day. The concerned authority should complete the construction on the diversion road at the earliest."

"I had to go to Keonjhar today. However, when I came to know about the bridge collapse on the national highway, I took an alternative route. I had to travel at least 100 kilometres extra to reach to Keonjhar," said a Sambalpur-based businessman Amit Mohanty.

Relocation cry

Thousands of villagers armed with lethal weapons, under the banner of Anchalik Surakshya Manch, congregated near the construction site of Kusei bridge on NH-215 in Keonjhar to oppose the construction of the high-level bridge over the river.

They are demanding relocation of the bridge. Work at the construction site was disrupted by the protest. Yesterday, the protesters had a clash with police, who lobbed tear gas shells and fired rubber bullets to control the mob. According to reports, the company involved with the construction of the bridge had put up red flags at the site in the morning before work began on Friday. The villagers opposed this.

When villagers started removing the red flags, police personnel deployed at the site opposed it, following which the situation went out of control leading to a scuffle between the police and the protesters.

Five protestors and two police personnel were injured.

Sixteen platoons of police forces were deployed at the site. Keonjhar collector N Thirumala Naik and SP Pandit Rajesh Uttamrao visited the site to take stock of the situation today. Section 144 had to be clamped in the area to prevent any untoward incidents.

Additional reporting by Amulya Kumar Pati in Keonjhar