At least three labourers injured as Lucknow Metro shuttering collapses

 Lucknow: Three labourers were injured, one of them seriously, when a shuttering between two under- construction pillars of Lucknow Metro, a flagship project of the Akhilesh Yadav government, collapsed here on Sunday.

There was however, no loss of life, District Magistrate Raj Shekhar said.

One of the injured, Sohan Lal is in critical condition and has been shifted to trauma centre and put on ventilator, Shekhar said.

The other injured were identified as Hitesh Kumar Srivastava and Junair Ahmad, both from Lucknow, Shekhar told PTI.

The DM said Sohan Lal has been given a compensation of Rs 2 lakh by the district administration as he is a registered labourer with the Labour Department.

Earlier reports had said 7-8 workers were at the site at the time of the occurrence of the mishap and most of them were discharged after first aid.

"No one is trapped in the debris," said Shekhar, who rushed to the spot along with Senior SP Rajesh Pandey to supervise relief operations and removal of debris.

"The incident took place at around 7 AM when a slab of 10x2 metre which was being cast near Alambagh bus station fell down," the district magistrate said.

Giving details, Pandey said the incident occurred when workers were filling concrete to reinforce the portion between two pillars at the busy Sujapura locality in Alambagh.

An LMRC spokesman said, "Concreting work for the cross arm was going on at the site since midnight and it was about to be completed when the incident took place. The site has been cleared and the traffic has resumed."

The cross arm is used as a structural base to build the concourse level (middle level) of any Metro station.

"A director-level inquiry committee, including safety experts from the general consultants, has been constituted for conducting an inquiry into the incident. The committee will submit its report soon," he said.

The Chief Minister said, "All safety precautions will be taken. I will inquire about incident and issue directives to ensure safety of labourers."
 LMRC is facing a tight deadline to complete the 8.5 km- stretch of the Metro rail project from Transport Nagar to Charbagh under the priority section. It has to run trains on trials by November 2016.