Punjab CM orders shifting of proposed medical college from Mohali

MOHALI: Depriving Mohali from getting its lone Medical College, the Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday has directed the state health minister to explore with the central government the possibility of shifting the proposed medical college in Mohali to border areas, possibly Sangrur, and to plan all future heath projects in areas that lack medical facilities.
Sources said that the proposal has been scrapped citing reason that Mohali is better urbanised and has much more facilities in and around than other districts like Sangrur.
Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh in April 2017 gave in-principle approval to set up a new government medical college with an intake capacity of 100 seats at Mohali in order to address the critical shortage of medical specialists while giving a boost to medical education in the state.
Then it was proposed to be the first of the five new medical colleges that the Congress had promised in its poll manifesto, apart from upgradation of infrastructure, facilities and manpower in the existing medical colleges.
The Chief Minister said he will himself also meet Union Health Minister JP Nadda to discuss the change of the medical college site, besides writing to the Prime Minister to expedite the AIIMS Bathinda project, for which the state government has completed all the necessary formalities.
The Rs 800 crore AIIMS Bathinda project is 100% centrally sponsored while the Rs 300 crore Medical College project is on a Centre-State sharing pattern in 70:30 ratio.
The directives from the Chief Minister came here during a meeting on Tuesday to review the status of the two projects, aimed at raising the health infrastructure bar in the state.
The Chief Minister was informed that Mohali was selected for the Medical College under a scheme floated back in 2012, for which a pre-condition required that the city should have a 200-bedded hospital which the Centre could help upgrade.
At that time, Mohali had one civil hospital, with 200 beds, and no private hospital or medical college, and thus met the terms and conditions of the scheme. Since then, however, other needier areas had also emerged to meet the conditions and could be selected for uplift of the medical facilities, the meeting discussed.