The canal in Bhagalpur district of Bihar was built at a cost of ₹828.80 crore.

A portion of a canal, which was to be inaugurated on Wednesday by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, in Bhagalpur district of Bihar collapsed on Tuesday owing to a breach and water entered into the residential areas of the National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) station at Kahalgaon and adjoining areas such as Siddharth Nagar and Kutahri Kali Sthan, causing hardship to people.

Water resource department engineers and officials were making efforts to contain the situation.

Local residents said the canal collapsed due to poor quality of construction.

The Chief Minister cancelled his programme due to “technical reasons.”

“Due to the breach in the canal, water entered some parts of the NTPC”, Vishwanath Chandan, PRO of NTPC, told local journalists.

The 11-km long Bateshwarsthan Ganga Pump Nahar Priyojna (Bateshwarstahn Ganga Canal Project) took 40 years for completion at a cost of ₹828 crore.

“The breach in canal happened due to release of water in full capacity... the incident has not caused any damage to the newly-constructed part of the project”, said State Water Resources Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh.

The breach, officials said, occurred around 5:30 p.m., when parts of the elevated canal built over a road collapsed when water was “pumped into the canal on a trial basis prior to the inaugural function.”

The Bateshwarsthan Ganga Pump Nahar Pariyojna is a “lift irrigation project” in which water from the Ganga is to be lifted with the help of pumps and released into the canal to irrigate agricultural areas of Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur and adjoining district of Godda in Jharkhand.

Started in 1977 with an initial investment of ₹13.88 crore, the project was to irrigate 23,000 hectares However, the project was expanded and the estimated cost shot up to ₹828 crore.