Kasaragod: The National Highway 66 being widened to six lanes in Kerala will narrow to a five-lane bridge over the Nileshwar river in Kasaragod district.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the federal agency implementing the project, is constructing a new three-lane bridge across the river but retaining the existing 66-year-old two-lane bridge on the east side.

The NHAI has a weird explanation for designing the gridlock at the mouth of Nileshwar municipal town. "The old bridge is still fit for use," said NHAI project officer Punil Kumar.

The old bridge will not only trigger traffic jams in Nileshwar town but will also block the proposed Rs 6,000-crore Kovalam-Bekal waterway because of its low height.

'A built-in bottleneck on a fast lane'

When asked why the NHAI is okay with a five-lane bridge when the project is to widen NH 66 to a six-lane road, Kumar said the road leading to the bridge and after the bridge has six lanes.

"NHAI has built in a bottleneck for Nileshwar town," said K P Jayarajan, CPM leader and former chairman of Nileshwar municipality.

Nileshwar is the entry point to six grama panchayats -- Madikai, Kayyur-Cheemeni, East Eleri, West Eleri, Balal, and Cherupuzha. On the left side of the bridge is the Nileshwar-Kottappuram road taken to go to Trikaripur panchayat in Kasaragod district, and Payyanur town in Kannur district. "The junction is less than 300m from the bridge. But NHAI is not foreseeing the traffic jam," said Jayarajan, vice-chairperson of Nileshwar Action Committee, an all-party citizens' collective formed to pressure NHAI to build a six-lane bridge over the river.

To be sure, the stretch of the highway from Chengala to Nileshwar is being built by Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited (MEIL).

The 'fit to use' argument does not sit well because 3.5km from Nileshwar bridge is the Karyamkode bridge on the same highway. NHAI is demolishing the Karyamkode bridge and building a new six-lane bridge.

To be sure, the Nileshwar bridge was built in 1957, and the Karyamkode bridge was built in 1962.

Nileshwar bridge blocking the inland waterway

In the state budget for 2023-2024, finance minister K N Balagopal earmarked Rs 141.66 crore for projects related to Inland Water Transport in the state.

Jayarajan says the money is almost exclusively for building an artificial canal connecting the Nileshwar river and the Chithari river, near Bekal. The artificial canal is part of the West Coast Canal (WCC), connecting Kovalam and Bekal through a 610-km inland waterway.

But the old bridge at Nileshwar will be a barrier to navigation on the canal because of its low height, said Damodaran T V, a chartered engineer who retired from Kerala's Public Works Department (PWD).

Since the WCC is part of the state waterway, it comes under classification I of the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI). "A bridge over the state waterway should have a height of 4m from the high flood line and the space between two pillars should be 30m," Damodaran said, quoting the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on November 30, 2016. The guidelines were sent to NHAI, IWAI, and chief secretaries of all state governments and union territories.

But the Nileshwar bridge has a height of only 0.8m from the high flood line.

Despite the 2016 directive from the ministry, NHAI's new three-lane bridge across the Nileshwar river had a height of only 2.5m.

"We had to petition NHAI to increase the height of the bridge," said Damodaran, convenor of the action committee.

Mallikarjuna H R of LN Malviya Infra Project Pvt Limited, an independent quality assurance company hired by MEIL and NHAI, said MEIL agreed to increase the height of the bridge by 1.5m as directed by the NHAI. "But there is no proposal from NHAI to demolish the old bridge and build another three-lane bridge," he said.

He said MEIL was going by the detailed project report (DPR) based on which the company bid for the project.

'Flouting directives, guidelines to cut cost'

If the DPR did not specify a 4m height for the bridge, it was a violation of the 2016 guidelines of MORTH.

But what he found fishy was that the 'Executive Summary' for the project prepared by NHAI in 2017 had two new bridges with three lanes each across the Nileshwar river.

But the three-lane bridge on the east side went missing when NHAI brought out another Executive Summary in 2019.

NHAI project director Punil Kumar told Onmanorama that the design of bridges could not be revised based on petitions. "Frequent changes to the design would disrupt the cost and timeline of the project. We are working on a tight schedule," he said.

He said the waterway was still a proposal and NHAI would build a new bridge when the waterway became a reality. "There is a railway bridge too with low height on the west side," he said, implying the action committee was targeting only the NHAI and not the Railways.

Kumar, however, said the old bridge would be strengthened.

Jayarajan and Damodaran said the NHAI officer was dishing out half-truths. "Firstly, the artificial canal does not pass under the railway bridge. So, its height did not concern the waterways project," said Damodaran

Secondly, the Kerala government's Inland Navigation Department drew the attention of the NHAI project director in Kozhikode to the waterway project on December 10, 2021.

The chief engineer of Inland Navigation and Kuttanad Package set the height of the Nileshwar bridge at 6m from the high tide level and space between two pillars at 50m as conditions to start the bridge work.

"An agreement has to be executed by the NHAI authority with the Executive Engineer, Inland Navigation Division, Kannur, before carrying out the work," the letter said.

But the NHAI is feigning ignorance of the waterway project now and calling it just a proposal.