AIIMS admission to begin in 2013

The admission to the first batch of AIIMS medical college proposed to be set up at Sijua on the outskirts of the city is set to begin from 2013.

The AIIMS-Bhubaneswar project consists of three components- hospital, medical college and housing and work has started on all the three areas. While the hospital would be taken up at a cost of Rs 264 crore, around Rs 100 crore would be spent on the medical college and Rs 50 crore on housing

The AIIMS-Bhubaneswar is coming up on 100 acres of land at Sijua and there was a problem pertaining to the approach road within the project site which is used by the locals. The locals of Sijua have demanded that the approach road should not be encroached by the AIIMS project. Discussions are being held with the locals to resolve the issue.

An eight-member delegation of the Government of India on Monday visited the site of AIIMS-Bhubaneswar to check the progress of the project.

A project monitoring committee headed by the state Chief Secretary B K Pattnaik is reviewing the status of the AIIMS project every month. This is being done to ensure that the AIIMS project is commissioned within the targeted timeline of September 2012.

Meanwhile, the state government has approved Rs 18 lakh for putting up a 11 KV line at the AIIMS project site while an additional Rs nine lakh has been approved for beautification of the campus, minister for health & family welfare Prasanna Acharya informed the state assembly in a written reply.

While the construction work for the hospital has been awarded to L&T, the medical college construction work is being done by Chennai-based Consolidated Construction Consortium Ltd.

It may be noted the erstwhile NDA government at the Centre had proposed to set up six branches of AIIMS at Patna, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Raipur and Rishikesh in 2003. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had given its nod to the projects in March, 2006.