No reduction in funding for ICMR: Govt

There has been no reduction of funding for Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in the last fiscal, the government said today.
"There was no reduction in funding of ICMR for the last fiscal year. The allocation of Rs 863.17 crore to the institute in 2015-16 was increased to Rs 893.74 crore at RE (revised estimate) stage," Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
She said the matter was taken up with the Ministry of Finance, and it was agreed that an additional allocation of Rs 200 crore will be made for ICMR in 2016-17 for funding critical research projects, including extra-mural projects.

"The government has constituted an Expert Committee for Peer Review of functioning of ICMR to examine the intra-mural and extra-mural research programmes, vis-a-vis availability of resources and their optimal utilisation, review of manpower component, scope of maximising the internal resource generation among others," the minister said.
ICMR had earlier alleged that a large number of biomedical research projects being undertaken by 32 scientific organisations across the country have been stuck due to resource crunch.