Team visits 4 Bathinda institutes to start AIIMS classes temporarily
BATHINDA:A team of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, along with officials of the state and central governments on Monday visited the four institutes proposed for starting MBBS classes of the upcoming All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bathinda, on temporary basis from this academic session.
The places proposed by the Bathinda administration for starting the session are the advanced cancer diagnostic and research centre of Guru Kashi University, Government Polytechnic College at Jai Singh Wala village and Adesh University, all in the district. The team was to visit the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot, in the evening.
The classes will start outside the AIIMS campus since work on its building is going on.
Union food processing industries minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, in a letter to Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh in December last year, had requested him to give the go-ahead to start the classes at BFUHS as it will help the state government save incurring additional expenditure on creating laboratories and hostel facilities for medical students as university has these facilities to absorb first batch of MBBS of AIIMS.
Prof Arvind Rajwanshi, dean (research, PGIMER), who headed the team, said, “We visited the Bathinda institutes and are going to BFUHS. We will submit a report to the central government.”
Even as Harsimrat Badal had expressed hope of starting the outpatient department (OPD) of AIIMS by this month, the facility is set to be delayed.
The work on constructing the building to house the OPD and Diagnostic Facilities is going on. Since the construction work is not expected to be completed sooner, the OPD is expected to start by June.
Even as the executing agency, HLL Infratech Services Limited (HITES), had set a 10-month completion deadline for construction of OPD and diagnostic facilities. As the work started in August last year, the building should be completed by June.