PATNA: The Mahavir Mandir Trust will open Sant Kabir Heart Hospital at Muzaffarpur at a cost of Rs 5 crore and install six life-size statues depicting the birth of Sita opposite Sitamarhi railway station at a cost of Rs 15 lakh.
These and other decisions were made in the trust s annual budget of over Rs 55.14 crore which was passed for the temple and four hospitals run under its aegis. Trust secretary Kishore Kunal said this is the second highest budget of a temple in north India, next to Vaishno Devi shrine. Ironically, the famous Deoghar temple, which was earlier the biggest pilgrim centre of Bihar, now in Jharkhand, never touched even Rs 40 lakh per annum.
The budget was passed at a meeting chaired by Justice (retd) B N Agrawal. It will construct a separate building for its Netralaya on a plot in Kadamkuan, which was earlier illegally occupied by the men of Asaram Bapu, at a cost of Rs 5 crore, said Kunal on Thursday.
Kunal said the trust has earmarked Rs 50 lakh for the treatment of cancer patients and special care will be taken of all cancer patients up to the age of 18. In addition, Rs 20 lakh will be spent on the treatment of patients suffering from other diseases.
The trust has sanctioned Rs 2 lakh for Shravan Kumar awards for those who serve their parents with devotion, Rs 1.50 crore for Mahavir Vatsalya Aspatal for establishing an ICU for heart patients and Rs 3 lakh for the uplift of downtrodden sections of the society.
The budget for Cancer Sansthan has been pegged at Rs 27.77 crore, of Arogya Sansthan at |Rs 6.82 crore and of Vatsalya Aspatal at Rs 5.20 crore. The Cancer Sansthan will also get a grant of Rs 5 crore from Bihar government, which will be spent on additional advanced accessories of the linear accelerator machine installed in the hospital at a cost of Rs 8 crore recently.
Regarding the income of the trust, Kunal said Rs 1.40 crore is expected from offerings, Rs 1.15 crore from rituals, Rs 2.35 crore from Naivedyam (laddoos), Rs 10 lakh from kheer and Rs 20 lakh from donations.