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The Narendra Modi government’s maiden Budget is likely to increase budgetary allocation for setting up new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in different states.
The Union Ministry of Health has submitted a proposal to set up AIIMS in at least 10 new states over the next one year and is expecting a higher allocation of 10-15 per cent for the same during Budget 2014-15, a senior official told Business Standard.
According to the official, work has already begun in this direction and the health ministry has written to different states to identify land for setting up AIIMS in their respective states.
Last year, while the United Progressive Alliance government had announced a total allocation of Rs 37,330 crore for the healthcare sector in Budget estimates for 2013-14, it made a provisioning of Rs 1,650 crore for the new AIIMS-like institutes under the central sector scheme Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).
Another official, in the know of developments, said the latest proposal to set up more AIIMS had secured “consent from the top-most level” in the government and therefore, would “certainly be part of the Budget”.
Currently, there are a total of seven AIIMS across the country including the one in New Delhi, which was set up in 1956. The other six are new institutes developed on the same model in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Odhisa, Rajasthan, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand. While these institutes were commissioned in 2012, indoor patient facilities in the hospitals of these AIIMS are currently functional in a limited way. However, two batches of MBBS students as well as one batch of BSc (Nursing) have already attended their classes from each of the six new AIIMS.
The previous government had also approved two other AIIMS - in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and West Bengal (WB) - in the second phase of PMSSY. While the state government in UP approved land for the same, the one proposed for WB is still stuck because of differences related to its location. While Congress leader and former union minister Deepa Das Munshi had made many efforts to take the institute to her constituency, Raiganj in North Dinajpur district, WB Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had wanted it in Kalyani, in the Kolkata metropolitan area.
Recently, after the National Democratic Alliance government took charge at the Centre, Union Minister for Health Harsh Vardhan said the Centre would look into Banerjee’s demand to shift the institute out of Raiganj.
The health ministry’s latest proposal has considered 13 new states including Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. Apart from these, Vardhan has also written to the chief ministers of Harayana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Punjab to identify land in three to four different locations for setting up AIIMS in their respective states.
The idea behind setting up these new AIIMS in each state is to reduce traffic in AIIMS Delhi as the number of critical care patients are increasing across the country.
Approximately 200 acres of land is required for setting up one AIIMS-like super speciality hospital-cum-teaching institute, one of the officials said.
