India, March 6 -- Carnac Bridge, one the first bridges built across railway tracks in the country, is only a few months from being reopened to traffic, in a brand new avatar. The new bridge will be inaugurated on June 10, more than a decade after this east-west connector in South Mumbai was declared unsafe.

Before it was brought down in a cascade of debris and sparks, holding up rail traffic on the Central Railway for a colossal 27 hours in November 2022, the project languished for years with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

It was in 2014 that the then 146-year-old bridge was declared unsafe and was shut to heavy vehicles. While an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) later revealed that work orders had been ...