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• Construction work on a new four-lane road bridge at Koelwar would start in August, said road construction department minister Nand Kishore Yadav in the state assembly here on Wednesday.Yadav was replying to a short notice question by Raghvendra Pratap Singh of the RJD, who reminded the minister about his announcement made in this regard in March last year. The new road bridge would be parallel to the present rail-road bridge, the minister said.

• Singh said traffic snarl-up on the old bridge was a routine affair. "The minister had promised to start work on the new bridge within a month but nothing happened even after one year of his announcement," he said.Yadav said the Patna-Ara-Buxar road has been selected under NHDP phase-3 for construction of a four-lane road. "It has been decided to construct a four-lane bridge parallel to the present one at Koelwar. The National Highway Authority of India ( NHAI) had invited tender and entered into an agreement with a private company on February 2 last. The work will start in August and it will be completed in two-and-a-half years time," Yadav said.

• Replying to a question raise by Bhai Veerendra about the demand of salary, allowances and pension for the elected representatives of the panchayati raj institutions, minister for rural works Bhim Singh said no such proposal was under government consideration. "Since they are not government employees, there is no provision and logic to pay them salaries and allowances," Singh said, and added that the office-bearers of panchayati raj institutions and gram kutchehries were being regularly paid daily allowance, travel allowance and special remuneration.

• The minister said the government provided Rs 22.12 crore for the payment of these allowances in 2010-11. The amount included Rs 10.93 crore to gram panchayats, Rs 9.3 crore to gram kutchehries, Rs 1.90 crore to panchayat samitis and Rs 26.34 lakh to district boards.Meanwhile, during zero hour, opposition members, a few of them carrying placards also, raised the issue of strike by unaided schools teachers, who have never been paid salary. Leader of opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui said the government was 'goongi aur bahri' (deaf and dumb) as it was not taking notice of the teachers' demands.

• Siddiqui pointed out that both the ruling parties, the JD(U) and the BJP, had promised in their election manifestoes to take care of the unaided schools teachers' demand, but did nothing and the teachers were up in arms again.Water resources minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary blamed the previous governments for the woes of these teachers and said the NDA government, under a policy, was providing fund to such schools. "We are sensitive to this issue and have sympathy with the teachers. As far as their salary and other demands are concerned, the government will have talks with them to find out a solution to this old problem," he said.

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