The High Court has strongly reprimanded the state government on the Morbi bridge accident in Gujarat. The court has also raised questions on the way of awarding the contract for the repair of the bridge. The court has summoned the Chief Secretary and asked why tenders were not invited for such important work. During the hearing, a bench of Chief Justice Arvind Kumar also asked how the agreement for this important work was completed in just one and a half pages. 

Let me tell you, 135 people lost their lives in the Morbi bridge accident and many others were injured. After this, the High Court had taken cognizance of the matter and called for answers from six departments. 

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to list for hearing a PIL seeking constitution of a judicial commission to probe the Morbi bridge collapse incident. A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice JB Pardiwala took note of the submission of advocate Vishal Tiwari, who filed the PIL, that the matter required urgent hearing. We got the papers late, asked the bench. We'll list it. What is urgency? The matter has urgency as there are a lot of archaic structures in the country, the counsel said, insisting that the matter be heard on priority.  

The death toll has risen to 134 in the collapse of a British-era bridge over the Machhu river in Gujarat's Morbi. Tiwari said in the petition that the accident shows the negligence and gross failure of the government officials. It has been said in the PIL that in the last one decade, there have been many incidents in our country where there have been cases of large number of casualties due to mismanagement, lapse of duty and negligence of maintenance which could have been avoided. The over a century-old bridge, located about 300 km from state capital Gandhinagar, reopened five days before the tragedy after extensive repairs and renovations. It collapsed on October 30 at around 6.30 pm.