Srinagar: More than two years and two months after cabinet approval, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in south Kashmir’s Awantipora area has seen only 3% progress in construction work.
The AIIMS was approved by the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister of India on 10 January 2019 at an estimated cost of Rs 1828 crore. On the same date, the AIIMS at Vijaypur in Samba was also approved. The progress of construction work at Samba is 10%, said Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.
22 new AIIMS including two in J&K have been approved under Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) and six of them at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Patna, Raipur and Rishikesh are already functional.
The apparent abysmal progress in construction works can be compared with the AIIMS at Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, which has seen 54% progress after being approved by the cabinet on 03 January 2018. Similarly, the AIIMS at Deoghar, Jharkhand, has seen 30% progress in construction work after being approved on 16 May 2018, less than seven months after approval to AIIMS at Awantipora and Samba.
The Government of India set January 2025 as the deadline for the project at Awantipora while the complete date for one at Samba is January 2023.
The central government has appointed CPWD as an executing agency for the Awantipora project.
Nearly 1886 kanals of land have since been handed over to it for construction.
In December last year, the centre directed the J&K administration to set-up a temporary campus adjacent to the proposed site of AIIMS Awantipora for starting medical courses from this academic year.
AIIMS in Samba district has secured the Health Ministry’s approval to start its first academic session from this year. The AIIMS has been sanctioned a total intake capacity of 50 MBBS seats for the academic session 2020-2021. (GNS)
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