Bihar: Daudnagar-Nasriganj four-lane road bridge on Sone river opened for public

PATNA: A three-km long road bridge on Sone river in between Daudnagar (Aurangabad district) and Nasriganj (Rohtas) was on Saturday formally opened for public by the state’s road construction department.
The four-lane bridge has been built at a cost of Rs 1006.56 crore.
Earlier, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar was scheduled to inaugurate this road bridge today. But he decided to cancel his scheduled programme to inaugurate the bridge in the wake of recent loss of 40 CRPF brave-hearts in a terror attack in Pulwama.
As the inaugural function was cancelled, the state government later decided to formally open the road bridge for public.
The new bridge, which connects Patna-Aurangabad NH-98 on its Daudnagar end and the Nasriganj-Koelwar state highway (SH-81) near Nasriganj, would reduce distance among different towns of Magadh and Shahabad regions of the state, road construction department’s (RCD) principal secretary Amrit Lal Meena told TOI.
He said the state highways from Gaya to Dumraon via Daudnagar, Nasriganj and Bikramganj had already been notified as National Highway (NH-120) by the Centre, hence the new road bridge would now be considered as part of the NH-120.
Prior to November 2005 when Nitish Kumar first came into power in Bihar, there were only two bridges on Sone river in the state. One was built on the Grand Truck Road in between Dehri-on-Sone and Barun while the second was road-cum-rail bridge at Koelwar.
“The state government built another road bridge on Sone in between Arwal and Sahar in 2012 from its own resources. The Daudnagar-Nasriganj road bridge is fourth bridge on Sone river in the state,” Meena said.
Meena also informed that a new six-lane road bridge on river Sone was being built at Koelwar by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) as part of its Patna-Buxar four-lane highway. “Attempts are being made to complete the construction of new six-lane bridge in the current,” he said.
The RCD principal secretary also said that a new state highway (SH-81) was being built by the state government in between Nasriganj and Koelwar on the western flank of Sone river. “The construction work on the Nasriganj-Sahar part of the SH has already been completed, while works is in progress on its Sahar-Koelwar part,” Meena said.