The broken bridge on the Buri Torsha at Balurghat in Alipurduar. A file picture

Alipurduar, Sept. 12: Around 20,000 people are crossing the Buri Torsha on rickety ferries everyday after a wooden bridge on a national highway was washed away at an Alipurduar village nearly two months ago.

The wooden bridge at Balurghat on the Alipurduar-Falakata section of NH31 was washed away on July 20.

Even though the divisional commissioner of Jalpaiguri had said repairs would begin within 72 hours of the bridge collapse, there is no evidence of any work at all in Balurghat, 26km from here.

The break in the road link means that vehicles are having to travel an extra 30km to reach Alipurduar from Falakata — a distance of 34km — via Cooch Behar town. The route through NH31 is also the shortest for vehicles coming to Siliguri-Jalpaiguri from lower Assam and the Northeast. The other option is NH31C.

Since July 20, every working day sees a huge crowd of men, women and children bound for Alipurduar standing on the banks of the river at Balurghat, waiting to catch a ferry. The district administration has pressed into service two small boats that ferry persons for free.

However, four to five private country boats are ferrying people, their bicycles and motorcycles for a fee. Inquiries revealed that the people had to shell out Rs 5 per head. People with bicycles had to pay Rs 10 and those with motorbikes, Rs 20 each.

Samarjit Sarkar, a government employee who commutes between Falakata and Alipurduar, said he was reaching his office late every day. “The bus services via Cooch Behar to Alipurduar are very erratic and every day we have to wait for several hours to get a chance to climb on to a ferry, it takes me more than two hours to cover this distance of 34km,” he said.

People wait for ferry rides on the banks of the Buri Torsha. (Anirban Choudhury)

Light vehicles and auto-rickshaws ferry the passengers on both sides of the broken bridge.

The merchants in Falakata have complained that they are suffering losses because of the snapped road link. “We are not getting goods from Siliguri as the truck owners are not agreeing to travel the extra distance via Cooch Behar. Our stocks are slowly getting depleted, we are apprehending huge losses if the bridge is not repaired soon,” said Dilip Saha, a wholesale trader of consumer goods.

The block development officer of Falakata, Sushanta Mondol, said the district administration had decided to temporarily repair the damaged bridge, but the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had not given them the permission.

“The NHAI engineers said they would take up the work soon. We are paying Rs 3,600 daily to the 12 men who run the boats and the makeshift landing and work in two shifts as people cross over even after dark,” the BDO said.

Mondol said if the NHAI took too long to repair the bridge, the administration would construct a temporary structure that could be used by light vehicles and two-wheelers.

The subdivisional officer of Alipurduar, Anurag Srivastav, however, said he had got a positive response from the NHAI.

“I have been told that they have sent a report on a project worth Rs 1 crore to their head office in Delhi, but the funds have not been sanctioned yet,” the SDO said.