Patna, July 31 (Reporter) Taking serious note of the recent one-by-one bridge collapse incidents in Bihar, Rural Development Minister Ashok Choudhary said that the vigilance would probe into such incidents. While talking to the newspersons here on Wednesday, Choudhary admitted that in the preliminary reports, irregularities were detected, and quality was found to be compromised during the construction of the bridges in question. In view of the preliminary reports, the department has recommended a vigilante probe into the bridge collapse incidents. The samples collected by the four-member inquiry committee constituted by the department were examined at NIT Patna and IIT Patna, which primarily found that the construction quality was inferior. The Minister said that in view of the report, the bridge collapse incidents were minutely reviewed and decided to get them probed by the Vigilance. He said action would be initiated at an accelerated pace against the corrupt engineers, and the additional chief secretary of the department, Deepak Kumar, has already recommended it. Directing an in-depth inquiry into other possible irregularities in the department, the minister has been instructed to rectify them. Chaudhary said that, concerned with the bridge collapse incidents, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had directed for an extensive inquiry and has also decided to prepare health cards for the bridges, for which the concerned departments have already been instructed. As it stands, 15 engineers have so far been suspended in the bridge collapse incidents, and several contractors have been blacklisted. Further actions would be initiated against them after the vigilance inquiry. The chief minister has also directed the reconstruction of the bridges that collapsed one by one recently in Bihar. Retorting sharply at some videos of the bridges that collapsed, as shown by the leader of the opposition, Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, the minister said that it seems that Yadav was totally unaware of the difference between the bridges and culverts. He said only three bridges belonging to the Rural Works Department collapsed, and the rest were culverts. He said the video shown by Yadav was of an under-construction bridge that was not even opened to the public. He said Nitish Kumar had constructed 2 lakh bridges and culverts, but none of them collapsed. He alleged that Yadav was trying to tarnish the image of Bihar. The minister said that the government would soon publish tenders for the construction of 900 bridges in the state. Chaudhary admitted that the roads were getting damaged within 5 years of their construction and said that artificial intelligence (AI) techniques would be used in the construction of roads and their monitoring. He said that after construction, the roads have to be maintained for 5 years and informed me that a separate tender for the maintenance of 12000 km of roads would also be published soon. Meanwhile, according to an official release, a portion of a bridge constructed in Araria district under Pradhanmantri Gramin Sadak Yojana Phase II collapsed on June 18, and two executive engineers and two junior engineers were suspended for dereliction in their duties at the time of the construction of the bridge. In addition to the suspension of registration for the concerned contractor, an assistant engineer and a junior engineer had already been suspended in this connection. Stern action was also being initiated against the contractor...////...