The Bihar government has informed the Centre that land was no more available at the Darbhanga Medical College Hospital (DMCH) for the construction of the state’s second All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and requested the Centre to reconsider its decision for granting expeditious approval to the alternate site proposed by the state.
Bihar’s deputy chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who also holds the health portfolio, informed this to Union health and family welfare minister Mansukh L Mandaviya through a letter dated August 14. HT has seen a copy of the letter.
The state government had earlier transferred 81 acres of land on the DMCH campus to the Centre for Darbhanga AIIMS before it came up with an alternative site on the Ekmi-Shobhan Bypass on the outskirts of the city in April this year. A Central team, sent the same month for site inspection, gave an adverse report, after which the Centre in May rejected the site, saying it was low-lying and unsuitable for AIIMS. The matter has since been hanging fire.
This was the second letter in the last two months that Yadav had written to Mandaviya regarding Darbhanga AIIMS.
In his latest letter, Yadav said that land was no longer available at DMCH following the state’s decision to upgrade its existing medical college here into 2,500 beds, against its present capacity of 1,030 beds. He said that the state government had also initiated work for floating tenders for the same.
He also said that the state had sanctioned ₹309 crore for land filling at the alternate site of 151.17 acres, of which 113.86 acres had been transferred to AIIMS-Darbhanga free of cost.
Yadav, who drew the attention of Mandaviya to his previous letter of June 22, said the state government had sanctioned ₹3,115 crore for the renovation of the DMCH into a 2500-bed hospital and it had also initiated work for floating tenders for the same. “As such, land was no more available at DMCH (for AIIMS),” Yadav said in his letter.
Bihar’s deputy CM also detailed the advantages, saying the proposed site for AIIMS would provide better and speedy connectivity to patients of north Bihar, Mithilanchal and even Nepal, as it was just 3kms from the East-West corridor, 5kms from the Amas-Darbhanga four-lane road, and 10kms from the Darbhanga civil aerodrome.
He said establishing the premier institute, as a greenfield project, like most other AIIMS in India, on the outskirts, would also help in the expansion and development of the city.
“Having the DMCH and the AIIMS as two separate institutions will also help in the development of two specialised hospitals in the region,” Yadav added.
Yadav, while urging the Union minister to reconsider his decision for according expeditious approval to the AIIMS at the site proposed by the state, also reminded him of his previous letter of June 22, saying a response was still awaited.
The two ministers had earlier taken to X (formerly known as Twitter) to engage on AIIMS Darbhanga after a reference to it by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while virtually addressing the Panchayati Raj Parishad in West Bengal on August 13.
