PATNA: The embankment of a major irrigation canal caved in hours before the Rs 389.31-crore project was to be inaugurated by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday.
Floodwaters from the breach inundated several areas of Kahalgaon town in Bhagalpur district including residential areas in the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) township there.
The breach forced Nitish Kumar to cancel the inauguration and caused embarrassment to the JD(U)-BJP government.
Engineers of the state’s water resources department began plugging the breach by sandbagging it.
The embankment of the 11-km-long Bateshwarsthan Ganga Pump Nahar Pariyojna caved in when water from the Ganga was released into the canal as a trial run on Tuesday evening.
As per the project, water from the Ganga is lifted by pumps and released into the canal to irrigate fields in Kahalgaon and Godda district in Jharkhand.
The principal secretary in the Water Resources Department, Arun Kumar Singh said the canal has not been destroyed. “Only a small part of the embankment has caved in, and we should be able to restore it in a day. We noticed some technical errors in the canal's scheme, and they will be rectified in a few months," he said.
Water resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh blamed the NTPC for weakening the embankment.
The breach provided an opportunity to opposition leaders including RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav to attack the Nitish Kumar government.
"During the floods last month, the minister had said rats had weakened river embankments and caused breaches. Now will he say a crocodile caused this breach," said Lalu Prasad.
Sharad Yadav said the breach pointed to a "huge loot" of public money. "Has it ever happened in history that a chief minister was going to inaugurate an irrigation project and the embankment caves in hours before inauguration? This tragedy is the result of massive loot," he said.
Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh said the breach did not cause any damage to the newly constructed portion of the project. "Before letting the water into the canal for a trial run, we should have checked the strength of the embankment which was built in the 1980s. The embankment was weakened because the NTPC made an underpass by digging a tunnel close to the breach site," said.
The government had put out advertisements in newspapers on Tuesday announcing the inauguration of the project by Nitish Kumar in the presence of Singh and local Congress MLA Sadanand Singh.