Portion of under-construction bridge over Ganges collapses in Bihar

A portion of an under-construction bridge in Bihar, which was being "dismantled", crashed into the river Ganges river on Saturday, officials said. The administration made it clear there were no casualties. Video footage of a slab of the bridge, connecting Bhagalpur and Khagaria districts, has gone viral on social media in which locals, beholding the sight from a distance, can be heard screaming "the structure has collapsed once again". Notably, portions of the bridge, which would be 3.16 km long once complete, had collapsed earlier in 2022 and again, a year later. However, when contacted, Khagaria District Magistrate Amit Kumar Pandey asserted that "the entire structure of the under-construction bridge has been deemed to be faulty and it is being dismantled by the contractor as per direction of the Patna High Court". The incident, which comes in the backdrop of numerous incidents of bridge collapse across the state, many of these taking place a few months back, triggered a politic