Finally, Kesarbagh ROB sees light of day, locals celebrate.

After long eight years, Kesarbagh railway over bridge (ROB) finally saw the light of day recently. Paresh Agarwal, site manager of Arvind Techno Engineers Pvt. Ltd. and JV Airen Developers Pvt. Ltd. that constructed the ROB said, “the bridge has been completed and it will soon be handed over to the Indore Development Authority (IDA).”

Residents of Kesarbagh area unofficially inaugurated the ROB on Sunday and celebrated its completion by burning firecrackers and dancing to the beats of drums.

The residents organised a programme for inauguration of the ROB and extended wishes to each other.

Local MLA Jeetu Patwari also reached the venue and joined the celebrations.

“It took more than eight years for this bridge to complete. It was because of the struggle of locals and the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court’s intervention into the matter that the bridge finally saw the light of day,” he said.

He specially extended wishes to Sanjay Kamble, who had filed public interest litigation (PIL) over delay in completion of the 800-meter long ROB.

“I had moved the court because my repeated reminders failed to wake up the IDA. The contractor and the IDA had breached 17 deadlines set by the court,” he said.

The construction work of Kesarbagh ROB began in 2007 and was expected to complete by the year 2008.

Due to delay in construction of the ROB, the project cost escalated from Rs. 20 crore to over Rs. 30 crore.

The IDA had terminated the contract of the bridge some months back citing unexplainable delay and public outage.

Following the recommendation of Divisional Commissioner Sanjay Dubey, the High Court last month had directed the contractor to resume the work and complete the bridge within 35 days.

IDA Chairman Shankar Lalwani said the ROB has been completed and it would be opened for traffic after a no objection certificate (NOC) is granted by the railways. Load test was also carried out on the ROB recently.

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