"The medical college to be set up over an area of 35 acres would have a 50-seat college upgradable to 100 seats. It will also have a 400-bedded hospital upgradable to 500 beds along with existing Civil Hospital (in Karnal)," a spokesman of the government said here. Karnal is 150 km from Chandigarh.
Work on the medical college campus will begin this year, he added.
Chawla, the first woman of Indian origin to go into space as a NASA astronaut, had died February 2003 when the Columbia space shuttle bringing her and six other astronauts disintegrated on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
She had earlier gone on another space flight aboard the same space shuttle Columbia as a mission specialist in 1997.
Chawla had studied at the Tagore Public School in Karnal before joining the Punjab Engineering College (PEC) in Chandigarh to pursue her aeronautical engineering degree. She later went to the US for higher studies and joined NASA.
The medical college in her memory will have an OPD (out-patient department) block and other medical facilities, besides having sufficient accommodation for students, nurses, paramedical staff and doctors.
The spokesman said that an Expression of Interest had been invited from the reputed firms, who have executed large projects of Rs.2 billion (Rs.200 crore) and above, for undertaking the work of designing and construction of the buildings of the medical college.