Thiruvananthapuram: After dilly-dallying, union health minister J.P. Nadda said the Centre is considering Kerala for setting up All India Institute of Medial Sciences (AIIMS).
The union minister said in Delhi that Kerala was being considered for the advanced medical institute. The proposal had earlier hit a roadblock following differences between Centre and State. The state government had even accused the Centre of blocking the project out of political vendetta.
The project is considered significant for the state as it is expected to bring in investment worth Rs 2000 crore.
All that the state had to do was to provide 200 acres of land. AIIMS model institutes are high-level government-funded hospitals and functions as referral centers for advanced cases requiring special treatment.
It may be recalled the state government had identified four locations for establishing the AIIMS in the state.
The CM had sought the intervention of a special team of officials to study the four locations and reach a conclusion so as to expedite the process.
Talks for an AIIMS in Kerala were going on since the previous UDF government's tenure. It may be recalled that during the 2014 and 2015 Union budgets, the BJP government at the Centre had announced that four states will get AIIMS. Later in 2015 and 2016, the Central government included another six more states.
But there has been no mention of Kerala getting the AIIMS. During the first visit of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan to New Delhi in 2016, he had held talks with Mr Nadda on the AIIMS issue.
