One of the two overloaded trucks that fell into the Bagjola canal after the Bailey bridge collapsed a little after midnight on Sunday. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

A Bailey bridge in New Town that was due for replacement collapsed under the weight of two overloaded trucks early on Monday, cutting off Action Area III and proving once again that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s showpiece township is a bridge too far.

The incident occurred when both trucks, one of them a 10-wheeler laden with sand, were headed for a construction site across the Bagjola canal around 1.30am, police said.

The drivers of both vehicles — none of them was apparently injured — fled after the incident.

One of the sand-laden trucks was stuck nose down in the bog along with the collapsed part of the bridge till late in the evening, appearing to symbolise everything that is wrong with the “world-class township” that the Left Front had set out to build.

Officials of Garden Reach Ship Builders and Engineers Ltd, which had built the “portable” bridge over the Bagjola canal in 2005, said it wouldn’t have collapsed had Hidco stuck to the load limit. “A 30-tonne bridge can bear a load of up to 45 tonne but it won’t remain stable if overloaded vehicles use it day in and day out,” said D. Pati, the general manager of the state-owned company.

The two trucks involved in Monday’s incident are estimated to have been carrying a combined load in excess of 70 tonnes.

Hidco was supposed to build a heavy-duty bridge over the canal before opening Action Area III to developers, but seemed to forget all about it even as it went about handing one plot of land after another to private parties. A Shapoorji Pallonji project is among the 20-odd housing complexes coming up in that part of New Town, including Akandakeshari and Chapna.

Housing minister Gautam Deb, also the Hidco chairman, insisted that development activity wouldn’t be affected much by the bridge collapse. “Trucks can use the alternative canal bank road off Patharghata to reach the eastern part of New Town,” he said.

On why the five-year-old bridge hadn’t been replaced with a permanent one despite the surge in construction activity, he said Action Area III had become a hive of activity only recently.

“We will construct a six-lane permanent bridge within a year. We had deputed a person to prevent overloaded trucks from taking the bridge, but it seems he failed in his duty,” added a senior Hidco official who did not wish to be named.

Prasanta Bhattacharjee, Hidco’s director-general of planning, admitted that the Bailey bridge was meant for light vehicles. A colleague blamed lack of policing in the area for temporary bridges — there are eight of them over the Bagjola canal — being used by heavy vehicles.

But nobody had an answer to how Action Area III could be developed if only light vehicles were allowed to reach the construction sites.