PATNA: In what sounded like an “enough-is-enough” snub, the Patna high court on Wednesday directed the Centre to make the upcoming Jaya Prakash Narayan All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Patna functional by October 2, 2012 or face contempt of court proceedings.
A division bench, comprising Justice Prakash Chandra Verma and Justice Aditya Kumar Trivedi, directed the Union health and family welfare ministry to ensure that the hospital, being constructed for over seven years at Phulwarisharif, on the outskirts of Patna, on the pattern of New Delhi’s AIIMS, starts functioning by the Gandhi Jayanti next year. The failure to meet the deadline shall be treated as contempt of court, the bench warned the ministry.
The foundation stone of the AIIMS-like hospital was laid by the then Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat on January 3, 2004. The project was planned to be completed within three years.
“The construction work got delayed due to the sluggish approach of the Centre and the state government,” said lawyer M P Gupta, who is also the general secretary of the Council for Protection of Public Rights and Welfare which filed a PIL in the court in 2005, seeking its intervention for speedy construction of the hospital.
Gupta said the project’s initial cost was Rs 335 crore which has been revised twice to Rs 585 crore and Rs 838 crore. It was only after the earlier HC prodding that the state government provided 100 acres of land for the hospital, he said and quoted the judges as having rued that though the governments announced public utility schemes, they remained unimplemented without the intervention of the judiciary.
The court formed a three-member committee, comprising Gupta, additional advocate general Lalit Kishore and the Union government’s counsel. The panel was given the mandate to visit the site and ensure that irregularities are not committed in the construction work.
The court would take stock of the progress of the work on August 1, 2012.