Subrahmanya : A bridge, built across river Kumaradhara as a link to the temple town of Subrahmanya, is ready for vehicular movement.

The bridge was built at an estimated cost of Rs 7.78 crore. Though the tender for the work on bridge was invited in March 2013, the work started only in November 2013.

Subrahmanya was witnessing hours of vehicular block due to submersion of a low water bridge connecting the religious place. With the new bridge ready, the devotees as well as the general public can visit Subrahmanya without any problem during monsoon.

The bridge was a long-pending demand of the people in the region. The work on the bridge should have been completed last August. However, due to delay in the work, the bridge could not be put to use during the last monsoon.

With the bridge inundating during monsoon, people travelling on Uppinangady-Subrahmanya and Gundya-Subrahmanya routes were facing inconvenience. Even the students studying in schools and colleges in Subrahmanya were also facing inconvenience during monsoon. They had to wait on either side of the inundated bridge for the water-level to recede. The students who had to reach their homes a few kilometres away from Subrahmanya had to depend on overcrowded private vehicles to reach their homes by a circuitous route when the bridge goes under water during monsoon.

The district administration was deploying Home Guards to ensure that no vehicles pass through the bridge when the water was overflowing on the bridge.

With the bridge getting submerged during heavy rainfall, those who had to reach Gundya (the main exit point towards Hassan, Bengaluru on NH 75), which is 23-km away from Kukke Subrahmanya, had to take the circuitous Puttur-Uppinangady route which consumes a lot of time. The other shorter route was the Kadaba-Uppinangady route. But not many dared to take this as the Hosamata bridge on the stretch was also prone to submersion when Kukke bridge goes under water.