BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government’s decision to inquire the Bomikhal flyover mishap by a team of Works Department officers is only an eyewash. For, how can two Chief Engineers of the Works Department be objective and free of prejudice in their probe of the commission and omission of the same department?
For record’s sake, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also happens to hold the Works Department portfolio and by entrusting the inquiry to two officers of the same department, is not the Government attempting to cover its tracks?
To expect the Department officials to nail their higher-ups and colleagues simply flies in the face of logic. At best, the probe would find scapegoats for such a massive lapse which could have resulted in a disaster had it not been a Sunday because the Saheed Nagar-Bomikhal route is used by hundreds of commuters on week days.
In the last four years, at least three such mishaps have occurred and in all instances, Works Department officers have been assigned the probe. The bridge over Mahanadi connecting Banki and Athagarh recorded two mishaps between 2013 and 2014. In June, a span of the Gurupriya Setu over Janbai river in Malkangiri crumbled. So far, no probe report has been made public, let alone any action on their basis. Had the Government been serious about going to the roots of the mishap, it would have roped in an independent agency to inquire into the mishap because there is no chance the Works Department would do the same. Why did the Government not choose the Central Public Works Department which is technically qualified to probe such an incident given its vast expertise?
There is also a growing clamour for a CBI probe ever since the Government ordered that the investigation would be headed by the CE (Roads) and CE (Designs). In fact, BJP MLA Pradeep Purohit has already demanded that the matter be handed over to the Central agency, if the Government wants an impartial investigation into the matter. The Central agency not only has expertise in investigating such cases, it can also dig up how the tender for the project was awarded and whether due process was followed.