View of AIIMS Delhi.
Credit: PTI Photo
Nearly five years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone, the Union Government on Thursday finally floated a tender for the construction of the much-delayed All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Madurai, which is planned to be build in 33 months after awarding the bid.
The delay in the construction of the premier medical institute at Thoppur, 13.5 km from Madurai, despite Modi laying the foundation on January 27, 2019 has been a pet topic for the ruling DMK and its alliance partners like the Congress and CPI(M) to needle the BJP in Tamil Nadu.
The tender has been floated after the Union Government received a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for funding the Rs 1,978 crore project. The advertisement issued in newspapers say the tender is for construction of buildings and site development for AIIMS and companies can apply for the work till September 18.
The AIIMS will have a hospital building spread over an area of 108,325 square metres with 870 beds including out-patient department, and Emergency, an Ayush block, teaching block, an auditorium with a seating capacity of 750, conference halls, separate hostels for girls and boys, service block, Director’s bungalow, and residential complexes for professors and other staff.
The total built-up area, excluding site development area) is about 2,00,851 square metres, the tender document says. The construction of the complex, which is expected to begin by December this year, will take about 33 months for completion.
Though the construction is yet to start, the medical college of AIIMS, Madurai is temporarily functioning from the Ramanathapuram Government Medical College. The Union Government has appointed Dr M Hanumantha Rao and Dr Prashant Lavania as the Executive Director and President of AIIMS, Madurai.
AIIMS, Madurai has been a topic of discussion even inside Parliament for the past few years with Madurai and Virudhunagar MPs, Su Venkatesan, and Manickam Tagore, raising the issue consistently. Last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the Parliament that AIIMS is fully funded by the Union Government and that construction will begin soon.
In the 2021 elections, non-construction of AIIMS was a major poll issue with DMK youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin brandishing a red brick in his election campaign and saying that he has “brought” the hospital “along with him.” His point was there was no building at the chosen site and all that was left was a brick and he took it with him to “showcase” BJP-AIADMK’s “development politics.”
Thoppur, the village where Tamil Nadu's very own AIIMS will come up, is located on the National Highway connecting Madurai with Kanyakumari. With work on the institute yet to start, there is little activity in the area when this correspondent visited – many said they are looking forward to the hospital.
AIIMS has always been in the news in Tamil Nadu, most times for the wrong reasons. To be fair, it is the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Modi which announced the setting up of the institute in the 2015-16 Union Budget, though Congress leaders claim they initiated the process.
The Centre took time to kick off the process and when things started moving, Tamil Nadu witnessed a political upheaval following J Jayalalithaa's death. In 2017, there was a clamour among ministers and senior leaders of AIADMK to take AIIMS to their area, delaying the process further.
Thanjavur, Tiruchirapalli and other cities were in contention – many associations took out rallies demanding that the institute should come up in their place, but Madurai won finally.