Lockdown holds up Mohali medical college completion

We are not sure whether we will be able to start the session this year and are trying our best to complete the project as soon as possible OP SONI , Punjab medical education and research minister

MOHALI:The Punjab government’s plan to kick start the first academic session after the completion of the Dr BR Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences in Mohali from August this year will be delayed because of the Covid-19 lockdown, state medical education and research minister OP Soni said on Tuesday.

Starting the session by August would have required completion of all formalities regarding intakes by April, which has not been done, he told the Hindustan Times.

Construction work on the campus too will take another three months to be completed.

The Rs 300-crore project was sanctioned in 2012 under the Centre-state partnership scheme of the Government of India with funding in the ratio of 60:40. The Punjab government finalised the site of the existing Civil Hospital in Phase 6 here to set up the institute which will start with 100 seats and be eventually upgraded to 220 MBBS seats.

The state government had also announced funding of Rs 157 crore for the construction of the college in its 2020-21 financial

budget.

“We are not sure whether we will be able to start the session this year and are trying our best to complete the project as soon as possible,” Soni said.

The process of recruiting staff had begun, he added.Director principal of the college, Dr Manjit Kaur Mohi, said student intake will also be affected by the postponement of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Under Graduate (NEET UG) 2020, from May 3 to July 26. In November last year, during an inspection of the institute before granting of permission for the commencement of the MBBS course with 100 seats from 2020-21, the Medical Council of India (MCI) pointed out several shortcomings in a report, including poor infrastructure and equipment, failure to recruit faculty and to upgrade the existing Civil Hospital to 300 beds, the last one being a basic requirement for the medical college. At present, the hospital has a bed capacity of 170, which includes a 50-bed de-addiction centre located 10km away in Sector 66, which the MCI team feels is “too far from the site”.