The AIIMS project in Baleswar, a satellite unit of the Bhubaneswar AIIMS, has been shelved under a conspiracy and is meeting a slow poison death, rued former Union Minister and former Baleswar MP Srikant Jena while talking to reporters here on Saturday.
He said his Congress party won’t tolerate this apathetic attitude of the Centre and would from January 16 launch an agitation across the district after a district-level convention.
“The AIIMS satellite unit in Baleswar as per an announcement would have been established with 350 beds. It would have included a super specialties hospital as well an international public health school for education and research on communicable diseases,” said Jena.
He said the project had been announced in February 2014 by the then Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. It would have not only benefited Baleswar district but the eastern India.
“As per my information, the (present) Central Government has stalled the project and is planning to shift it elsewhere in the State near Bhubaneswar,” said Jena, adding that though the State Government has given 25 acres of land in the Balia area in Baleswar, nothing except a boundary wall is constructed around the proposed site during the last about four long years. Jena said all this on the sideline of a Congress meeting.