No AIIMS for Kerala

New Delhi: Kerala has been omitted from the list of States that would get an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), much to the disappointment of people in the State.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the Union budget 2017-18 in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, announced that two new All India Institutes of Medical Sciences would be set up in Jharkhand and Gujarat as part of the Centre's plan to increase healthcare in the country.

The demand for an AllMS-like institute, as promised by the Centre in 2014, has been a topic of political debate in Kerala.

In 2014, the then Union Health Minister Harshvardhan had declared that under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY), all States would get AIIMS-like institutions in a phased manner. He later wrote to the Chief Ministers of 13 States including Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Punjab, Assam, Karnataka, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Haryana asking them to identify suitable locations for setting up AIIMS-like institutions.

As per the Centre’s directive, the former UDF government had identified four locations based on infrastructural facilities. Despite several reminders to the Centre, the site inspection was yet to happen.