Gujarat Congress wrote to Gujarat High Court to take suo moto action in the Morbi bridge tragedy. National spokesperson Alok Sharma alleged the ruling party for sheltering the Oreva Group–that renovated the bridge. Major demand of the party is to scrap the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the government and replace it with SIT having members–not affiliated to government services.
The party is seeking a judicial probe into the collapse of the suspension bridge over Machchhu river in Morbi, Gujarat, on October 30. The tragedy resulted in the death of more than 134 people.
National Congress spokesperson Alok Sharma said, “We have important questions about the SIT formed in the Morbi bridge tragedy case. Who formed the SIT? Why is there no official letter about it? Why does the SIT have only government members? We demand the Gujarat HC to scrap this SIT and form an independent SIT that is devoid of government employees. This is for impartial assessment of the matter and to take actions against the company at fault.”
A five member panel has been set up to probe the morbi bridge tragedy which claimed more than 134 lives leaving several injured. A special Investigative Team (SIT) headed by an IAS officers, was formed by the Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel to inquire into the suspension bridge collapse in the Morbi town.
The SIT will be headed by Commissioner of Municipalities Rajkumar Beniwal, and the other members are Secretary, Roads and Building Department, Sandeep Vasava, Inspector General of Police Subhash Trivedi, and two engineers specialised in structural and quality control.
Another point raised by Sharma was on the postmortem of the people who lost their lives. He said, “Why was there no postmortem of the bodies? There was no medical report about a person’s death. This is not an act of God but an act of fraud. With this, we demand the fitness assessment and financial assessment of all projects inaugurated by the government in the past one year.”
Former Gujarat chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela also wrote to the Chief Justice of Gujarat about taking suo moto actions in this case. He said, “When actress Srivedi passed away, PM Modi tweeted on the same day but when over 150 people died in a tragic accident, PM Modi took 1.5 days to mourn their death? I appeal to the Gujarat High Court to take suo moto actions in this matter.”
