No luxury hotel in place of Lilavati Hospital: Chavan

Mumbai, April 19 (IANS) The state government will make all efforts to stop a proposal to close down the Lilavati Hospital & Research Centre (LHRC) and make way for a five-star hotel on the premises, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has said.

In a statement in the Maharashtra assembly late Thursday, Chavan said that though the government had not received complaints about the proposed move, the government would stall it in public interest.

He was replying to a calling attention notice by BJP state president and house member Devendra Phadnavis on the issue.

"There is a malafide plan to shut down Lilavati Hospital & Research Centre), Bandra, and to construct a five-star hotel there by those who are wrongfully and illegally calling themselves trustees of the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta (LKM) Trust: Kishore Mehta, his wife Charu Mehta, sons Rajiv, Rajesh and Prashant, and others," Phadnavis said in his notice.

He said the four people were using illegally printed stationery, diaries, letterheads, pamphlets of the LHRC and were unauthorisedly interfering with the activities of the LKM Trust, and these people have illegally amassed money to gain control over the LHRC (hospital).

Chavan said in his reply that as per the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, it is mandatory for a trustee to take permission of the concerned authorities for going out of India for a period which is more than stipulated.

However, it was evident from the records of the LKM Trust that trustee Kishor Mehta had not taken any such permission, he added.

Ranked among the leading private hospitals in Mumbai, the 314-bed LHRC offers multi-superspeciality medical facilities to patients, many of whom are VIPs and celebrities like Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and the Dalai Lama.

Since the past few years, a section of trustees have been embroiled in different types of controversies and in-fighting.