The Central government has formed a five-member team under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to inspect a proposed site in Telangana for the setting up of an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for Telangana.
This comes weeks after the Centre wrote a letter to the state government saying that an in-principle nod had been given and asking the latter to identify land for acquisition following which a Detailed Project Report (DPR) would be sent to the Expenditure Finance Committee.
The letter penned by the Department of Expenditure under the Ministry of Finance said that the DPR could be prepared by any reputed agency.
Following this, the state government had recommended the Bibinagar campus of Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), along with a few other sites.
A meeting is also expected to be scheduled soon between Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and state Health minister C Laxma Reddy on the sites that would be shown to the team.
According to media reports, the team consists of AIIMS Delhi medical superintendent DK Sharma, AIIMS Rae Bareli superintending engineer GP Srivastava Sunil Sharma, Union Ministry’s senior architect Mukesh Bajpai and two officials from the Prime Minister Swasthya Surakshna Yojana(PMSSY).
The details of the Central team's visit are yet to be finalised.
This comes months after the Telangana government expressed great anger, as the long-pending issue of an AIIMS to be set up in Telangana was not even addressed by the Centre during the recent Union Budget.
While the setting up of one each new AIIMS in Jharkhand and Gujarat was announced, no such announcement was made for Telangana, despite provisions in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
Telangana was allocated Rs 75 crore for the IIT in Hyderabad and Rs 10 crore for a tribal university.
The state government had been putting constant pressure on the Centre over the issue, with Health Minister C Laxma Reddy even travelling to New Delhi with a delegation to meet Union Health Minister JP Nadda.
IANS inputs