After the recent cracks and leakages at the ISBT building and cracks at Umshing bridge in the Mawlai By-Pass, the State today witnessed another structural defects when the dome of the under-construction Assembly building at Mawdiangdiang came crashing resulting in major damage to the central wing of the building.
The incident took place at around 12:30 am today when nobody was working at the construction site. Officials from the PWD (Buildings) and Assembly Secretariat today rushed to the site to assess the damage.
PWD (Buildings) Executive Engineer Ransom Sutnga who was entrusted with supervising the construction of the Assembly building blamed the flaws in design for the collapse of the dome.
According to him, the false column atop the cross-beam could not support the dome and GRC moulding, totally weighing around 70 tons.
He further informed that the height of the dome is about 65 meters while the height of the minar was 13 meters.
Sutnga also said that the designs of the entire Assembly building were approved and vetted by IIT-Roorkee.
“After the incident happened, I personally analysed everything and I feel it is because of the flaws in design. The weight of the dome is so heavy. We will redesign this portion and go for a light structure especially for the dome,” Sutnga said.
Stating that the right and left wings of the Assembly building are intact, Sutnga said redesign of the damaged structure will result in delay of completion of the building by another eight months.
He also said it would take another two weeks to clear the debris.
The work on installation of the dome made of steel structure started two months back. The crane used for the purpose of lifting and installing the dome structure took almost one-and-a-half months to travel all the way from Chennai by road.
Till date out of the Rs 177.7 crore estimated for the Assembly building, an amount to the tune of Rs 130 crore has been spent so far.
The project has been allotted to Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd which is a public sector undertaking of the Uttar Pradesh government. PWD (Buildings) is the executing agency for the project.
The work on the new Assembly building on 80 acres of land at Mawdiangdiang was started in June 2019 and was to be completed by August 2022.
Assembly Speaker Metbah Lyngdoh had recently said that he was hopeful of holding the next autumn session of the Assembly in the new building.
