Ahmedabad:  A flyover bridge in Hatkeshwar area of the city, connecting Khokhra to CTM will be demolished. A four years old bridge is aged like it was built 20 years ago due to the weak quality of concrete. The bridge surface has developed holes. The bridge has been closed for traffic long ago. Rs. 39.87 crore bridge was built by Ajawy Engineering Infrastructure Company from April 2015 to November 2017 period. SGS India was the project management consultancy firm for this project.

The Amdavad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has filed a police complaint against Ramesh Patel, Rasik Patel, Chirag Patel, Kalpesh Patel, Amit Thakkar, Shashi Jogani and Nilam Patel, all from Ajay Infrastructure and SGS firms. The AMC has also ordered a departmental inquiry against 8 and suspended four of them, three of whom are retired. Those suspended and facing departmental inquiry are Satish Patel, Atul Patel, Ashish Patel and Manoj Solanki. Those who are facing departmental inquiry are PD Patel, Paresh Shah, Hitesh Contractor. All were engineers working with AMC and responsible to ensure the quality of work.

The AMC has four experts test reports from IIT Rurki, Ecube Concrete Consultant, KCT Lab, and CMAC lab regarding the poor quality of the bridge. The AMC has decided to levy the cost of demolition and reconstruction of the bridge from contractor Ajay Engineering Infrastructure. The firm has been blacklisted by AMC forever along with another firm SGS India Pvt Ltd, a project management consultancy that was responsible for the supervision of bridge construction. The bridge after its opening was named as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj flyover. It’s an important bridge that connects city’s eastern areas to Ahmedabad – Vadodara expressway. DeshGujarat