CHENNAI: Congress MP from Sivaganga Karti Chidambaram o wrote to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya requesting to expedite the construction of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Madurai.
In a letter to the Health Minister, the Congress MP said, “I would like to bring your attention to the unreasonably slow progress with respect to the construction of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Madurai.”
He said that the foundation stone for the first AIIMS in Tamil Nadu was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 27, 2019. “Three years on only compound walls cordoning off the campus site have been built so far,” he said.
“In a response to a question in the Lok Sabha on December 9, 2022, you had informed the House that there has been a delay in the project implementation owing to a revision in cost by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), from earlier Rs 1.264 crores to the revised Rs 1, 977.8 crores.
The House was further intimated that the project will be completed by October 2026,” Chidambaram further said.
He said that this delay means that the maiden batch of MBBS students at AIIMS Madurai will have to complete their education from the Government Ramanalhapuram Medical College (GRMC), without ever stepping foot inside their own college.
“GRMC was simply meant to be a temporary teaching campus for the students for two years. Such a situation is far ideal for the meritorious students who made their way into a premier institute of medical education.
AIIMS Madurai has the potential to act as a hub in the state of Tamil Nadu and I urge you to intervene to expedite the completion of the project,” he added. (ANI)
The foundation stone for the AIIMS in Madurai was laid by the Prime Minister when he paid a visit to the district in January 2019. (ANI)