Statesman News Service

Kolkata, 6 January

Union minister for health and family welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad today parried questions on the setting up of an AIIMS-like hospital in Raiganj and said land acquistion has been a common problem across the country.

The state and the Centre had been locked in a tussle over selecting a district to set up a model hospital like AIIMS. The Centre wants the facility at Raiganj, while the state intends it to be built in Kalyani or other peripheral areas of the state capital.

The Trinamul Congress has political reasons for earmarking Raiganj since the district is a Congress constituency.

Mr Azad, who was in the city to attend the governance body meeting of Chhitaranjan National Cancer Institute, said, “Thirty-nine medical colleges, including three in the state, would be converted into super specialty facilities. The Centre would allocate Rs 150 crore to each of the medical colleges for the upgrade,” said the union minister.

In the state, the Bankura, Malda and North Bengal medical colleges would be transformed into super-specialty units.

He further said, teritary centres for cancer research and screening would be set up at Burdwan, Murshidabad and Sagar Dutta medical colleges.

The union minister, along with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, inaugurated a host of facilities such as a dual-energy linear escalator for cancer patients at the institute and also did a symbolic inauguration of the administrative block and outdoor patient department at Calcutta Medical College, before laying the foundation stone of the super specialty block of the medical college.

The chief minister lauded the research work carried out by Chhitaranjan National Cancer Institute and said, “All formalities have been completed to hand over the land to the institute for its second campus at Rajarhat.”