CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is not comfortable with the three options the Centre has given for accommodating the first batch of students at the Madurai AIIMS till it gets its own building and is looking for more viable ways, health minister Ma Subramanian said on Thursday.
Speaking to the media here a day after the Centre told the Madras High Court that admissions to AIIMS Madurai can begin in 2021, Subramanian said the Centre, in a letter dated June 4, had given three options for accommodating students until the college building was constructed. The first option was to send students to the central government’s Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research in Puducherry.
Or the state could allow students to study at a government medical/arts college in Madurai. The third option was to permit admissions in any of the self-financing medical colleges in Madurai.
The Centre has said that these students will be transferred back to the AIIMs campus at Thoppur, Madurai, once construction was completed. “But the state is not comfortable with any of these options,” Subramanian said. “We don’t want to send students out of the state or to study in a self-financing institution. We may also not be able to send all the 150 students to the government medical college, because the college already admits 250 students every year. Crowing 400 students on the same campus will make it uncomfortable for students,” he said.
Over the last few days, the state has been analysing two other strategies. “We want to see if we can admit 50 students each in three government medical colleges in Madurai, Theni and Sivaganga. Or we can add Trichy and Tuticorin to the list and have 30 students in each of these five colleges,” he said. The state’s recommendation will soon be submitted to the Centre. “People know who delayed construction. The AIADMK government did not give adequate pressure to expedite work,” he said.
After DMK came to power, chief minister MK Stalin wrote a letter on June 5 urging the Centre to hasten construction work. He spoke about this when he met PM Narendra Modi on June 17, Subramanian said. The Centre first announced that it will set up an All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Tamil Nadu on February 28, 2015.
On June 18, 2018, it was finalised that the hospital will come up in Madurai. On December17 the same year, the Centre said that in 45 months it will complete construction of a 750-bed facility in Thoppur at a cost of ₹1,264 Crore.
On January 27, 2019, prime minister Modi laid the foundation stone. After 11 months, on November 25, 2019, work for construction of a compound wall began. After this, TN handed over additional land parcels taking the total area to 224 acres. On March 26, 2021, the Centre signed a loan agreement with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the construction.
“But the Centre which initially planned to complete construction in 45 months has been told that the funds will be allotted over 71 months. They may also have to revise their estimate,” Subramanian said.
