Bathinda, October 11
The busy Bathinda-Sriganganagar highway (NH-15) had to be closed to traffic after the makeshift diversion collapsed last night. The road is likely to remain closed to traffic for 45 days and an 8-km-long diversion via villages has been created.

According to sources, a bridge across a distributary, about 9 km down the highway from here towards Abohar, had to be dismantled one and a half years ago. Choking of the distributary had resulted in the land around the bridge becoming heavily waterlogged and the walls supporting the bridge had subsided.

Assistance of the Army and the Central Public Works Department had been sought to dismantle the bridge.

Sources add that instead of creating a diversion a little away from the site, a makeshift bridge by using surplus RCC pipes topped by mud was made right at the place where the old bridge was. This held up repair work.

An estimate of Rs 27 lakh for the construction work was approved by the Central government in August this year but the Punjab Irrigation Department threw a spanner in the works by refusing to stop flow of water in the distributary. It had maintained that flow of water could be stopped only after September after the end of the paddy season when demand of the farm sector for water was reduced.