MADURAI: By the New Year 2018, the people of Tamil Nadu will know where an AIIM- like Central Medical institute will be located in the State.
The Union Health and Family Welfare ministry has constituted a sub-committee on August 1 this year to assist the expert committee to finalize the place based on ‘challenge method’ within next two months, said R Murugappan, Central government standing counsel who appeared for Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, informed the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday.
He further said that the committee might also visit five locations including Perundurai in Erode district, Thoppur at Madurai, Pudukkottai town, Sengipatti in Thanjavur district and Chengalpattu in Kancheepuram district, as recommended by the state government to award marks for each sites after assessing the facilities available at each site. The sub-committee would award high marks for the place, which is best among the 5 locations, he added.
Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan, who heard the public interest litigations filed separately by R K Baskar and K K Ramesh from Madurai seeking to direct the Centre to expedite the process to establish AIIMS-like institute in Tamil Nadu, observed that already three-and-half years have lapsed after the expert committee inspected the five places for three days between February 22 and February 25, 2015.
Dr J Radhakrishnan, Tamil Nadu Health secretary in his counter affidavit too clarified to the court that the state government has provided all the required details until July 12 this year, which had been asked by the Centre to expedite the decision process, said Justice Sasidharan.When the judges asked to announce the location by November, as the issue was pertaining to public health in the State, the Central government standing counsel requested to grant some more time to make the final decision on the location. Disposing off both petitions the judges directed the Centre to announce the location selected for setting up the institute on or before December 31, as ‘New Year gift’ to the people of Tamil Nadu.
