A crater opened up on the approach road to a newly built bridge over the Tons River in Uttarakhand’s Nanda Chowki on Tuesday, just 16 days after the Rs 16-crore structure was opened to the public. The bridge was inaugurated on July 12.

Officials said heavy rainfall had washed away soil beneath the approach road, causing it to collapse. The damage resulted in traffic disruption on the route connecting Dehradun to Vikasnagar and neighbouring Himachal Pradesh.

District Magistrate Ashish Chauhan directed Public Works Department (PWD) officials to repair the damage and restore traffic within three hours. He also ordered action against the official responsible for the lapse.

Rajesh Chandra, Head of the Department at PWD, said water had entered the structure, creating a vacuum and a cavity beneath the road, indianexpress.com reported. “We expect to fill the affected cavity within the next couple of hours, after which restoration work will continue,” he said.

Chandra said the stretch was originally washed away during floods that hit Dehradun on September 16, 2025. The road, operated by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), had been handed over to the PWD for repair, the report stated.

He estimated the damage at around Rs 2 lakh, adding that the cost would be borne entirely by the contractor, Himalayan Construction. “Since the project is still within the defect liability period, the contractor is contractually obligated to carry out the repair and restoration work at its own expense,” Chandra said.

The collapse triggered a political row, with the Opposition Congress accusing the BJP government of corruption. Congress leader Suryakant Dhasmana, who led a sit-in protest at the site, alleged that funds meant for the bridge had been siphoned off. “Everything has been swallowed up — bricks, stones, mortar, gravel, cement, steel reinforcement bars, and even the offerings made at Ram Mandir, Kedarnath, and Badrinath have all been siphoned off,” IE report quoted him as saying.

Dhasmana demanded the dismissal of the state’s Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Satpal Maharaj and requested that a case be registered against the engineer who supervised the bridge’s repair work, PTI reported.