Wrap-up: A city of not so much joy

At least 26 people were killed and 88 injured as a portion of an under-construction flyover collapsed on a congested road intersection in Kolkata, crushing people and vehicles. The state government has ordered a high-level probe into the incident.

A day after the under-construction flyover collapsed on Friday in Kolkata, the police arrested three top officials of a Hyderabad-based company which was building the flyover and slapped murder charges on them.

Earlier, the police had detained 10 officials of the construction company IVRCL’s Kolkata office for questioning. About a 60-metre-long stretch of the 2.2 km flyover under construction crashed down on the congested road intersection.  A day after an official of IVRCL dubbed the Kolkata flyover collapse as an “act of God”, IVRCLs legal team head P. Sita said, “It is an accident”.

DC’s take
Infrastructure development is one of the top priorities of governments worldover. The older the city, the more difficult it is of developing it as per contemporary needs. Add to this political apathy and administrative negligence, and what we get is a deadly cocktail which unfolds like it did in Kolkata. Yes, flyovers, roads are the need of the hour. But certainly it cannot be at the cost of human life. Had the government paid heed to the faulty design of the flyover, precious lives could have been saved. Also, this should serve as a wake-up call for all state governments to undertake an audit of under-construction projects and do the needful to avoid mishaps like this.