Darbhanga AIIMS back in doldrums as Centre rejects land offer of Bihar
New Delhi: The proposed All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Darbhanga is again mucked as the Centre has rejected Bihar’s land offer at Ekmi Shobhan Bypass saying that the site was “not suitable” for setting up medical college and hospital facilities.
“State government is therefore again requested to kindly provide some other suitable land for setting up of new AIIMS at Darbhanga so that implementation of the project can be taken up promptly in larger public interest,” Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to Bihar Additional Chief Secretary Pratyaya Amrit on May 26.
The Ministry’s rejection is based on the report submitted by the survey team deputed to inspect alternate Ekmi Shobhan Bypass site. The team is categorical that the proposed location has “certain potential disadvantages making the execution of the project on this site more complex.”
It said the land was in low lying area — 7 metres below its approach road — with big deep craters where earth filling of more than 10 metres would be required. And to fill and compact the entire 151 acres would require a huge quantity of soil that may not be readily available in and around Darbhanga, it added. Further, the compaction and uniformity of the filling was highly questionable as the existing soil had swelling and shrinking characteristics, posing a ‘serious threat’ to compacted soil to cause instabilities to the structure. “A need may arise to propose a ground improvement technique once the land filling is done as the underlying soil has poor engineering characteristics, specially black cotton soil,” it emphasised.
The survey team is of the opinion that there might be a possibility of water logging in the surrounding lowland areas if structures are built on filled up land. Because of the low permeability of the surface layer of the natural ground, it warned that there might be a possibility of waterlogging in the surrounding lowland areas. All the above, it asserted, would lead to higher project costs and time over-runs. The project is already long overdue as it was first announced in 2015 ahead of the Bihar Assembly polls that year. But it was announced officially, after much dilly dally, when it got Cabinet approval in September 2020 at an estimated cost of 1,264 crore with 15-20 super-specialty departments and 750 hospital beds.
Bihar was asked to hand over 75 acres of land from Darbhanga Medical College & Hospital (DMCH) campus within six months. In November 2021, Bihar approved transfer of DMCH’s 200 acres of land but a month later, during his visit to Darbhanga, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said only 150 acres would be allotted for AIIMS — the remaining 77 acres would be retained to upgrade and expand facilities for DMCH. The project came to a standstill and then picked up when, in September 2022, Bihar officially transferred 81 acres of DMCH land as part of the first phase of the AIIMS project. It spent Rs 13 crore on the land-filling process, and demolished the anatomy department, a lecture hall and a bank branch. But all this did not go down well with the DMCH administration and doctors. They were apprehensive that once the AIIMS project starts, DMCH will be closed. During his Samadhan Yatra in January 2023, Kumar told the media that DMCH will not be upgraded as an AIIMS and will be shifted to a new location.
It was later known that the new site was Ekmi Shobhan Bypass, 3-4 kms away from NH-57.
