BMRCL employees union seeks quality check of metro works

Bengaluru: In a letter to Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Suryanarayan Murthy, the vice president of the BMRCL (Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited) Employees Union, sought an independent quality inspection of the metro operations in Bengaluru. Notably, last month two civilians—a woman and her young son—were killed when a reinforcement cage for the current Metro under construction pillar collapsed close to Nagavara in the city.

"I request that you (Bommai) please appoint certified experts from IISc and IIT to perform a quality check of pillars and check the durability of all Metro pillars that are being constructed and those that are already constructed," Murthy wrote in a letter sent to the chief minister. The BMRCL including the managing director and 20 top corrupt officials are poorly running the management which is imperilling Metro construction works in Bengaluru."

He added that it is necessary to verify the Metro pillars between MG Road and Biayapanahalli and Mysore Road and Kengeri for strength and quality. "I have written to the BMRCL administration numerous times to express my worries about the safety of Metro pillars in key locations. The BMRCL's work is of poor quality... Murthy continued, "No action has been taken against the engineers and contractors responsible for the poor job."

Following the woman's and her son's death on January 12, the BMRCL suspended the deputy chief engineer, the executive engineer, and the site engineer. In response to Chandra Kishen's report for the IISc, the BMRCL has modified the standard operating method for constructing pillars.

Kishen, who independently investigated the reinforcement cage collapse, claimed that the absence of supporting structures was to blame. To reduce the risk of collapse, the research suggested casting the reinforcement cage in two stages. Similar to this, the preliminary study from IIT-Hyderabad said that the collapse of the reinforcing cage was caused by "inadequate design of the supporting structures'