AIIMS’ open job offer to own passouts

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 11

Senior residents and postgraduates of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and similar institutions across the country now have an open job offer from the government. 

  In a first, the Ministry of Health has finalised a policy of campus recruitment for AIIMS passouts to fill teacher vacancies in upcoming AIIMS across states. The current vacancy in AIIMS across India is 47 per cent.

“Senior residents of AIIMS can now be put as faculty in any AIIMS-like institution. We will work to see that AIIMS postgraduates become AIIMS faculty. Earlier, four AIIMS senior residents would apply for faculty posts but only one would get in due to procedural delays. Now, the recruitment process has been reviewed to ensure no time is lost vis-à-vis appointing AIIMS senior residents as faculty at new AIIMS institutions. This has been done to take the AIIMS culture to new institutions coming up under the big brand name. AIIMS is a culture,” Health Minister JP Nadda told The Tribune.

This will be achieved through a major change in faculty recruitment rules. In the past, any new faculty to be appointed needed to be approved by the general body (GB) of each AIIMS-like institution (every AIIMS is established under an Act of Parliament and is autonomous).

“The GB meets once in six months. In this interval, we are bound to lose bright students as they won’t wait for months to be appointed and would instead go to the private sector. 

Now, the GB and institute body of every AIIMS has resolved to delegate faculty appointment powers to a selection committee that will meet more often to fill vacant posts,” said Nadda.

The selection panel will be a sub-committee of the general body of every AIIMS and will comprise GB members. Health Secretary Preeti Sudan called the new move “campus recruitment of AIIMS postgraduates to fill faculty posts at new AIIMS”.

The idea is to close every AIIMS faculty post as soon as it is opened. New rules allow the GB of every new AIIMS to ratify the selection committee appointments post facto. Asked if the move would require amendments to the Act, Nadda said “no”.

The minister admitted that against 40 AIIMS faculty posts being advertised on an average, only 15 were being filled due to lengthy appointment procedures, which would now be taken care of.

Every new AIIMS needs a faculty of over 200 to start with. AIIMS, New Delhi, an established institute, has 900 faculty members.

20 institutions on way

• Under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana, the Centre plans to build 20 new AIIMS. Of these, six are operational at Raipur, Patna, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Rishikesh and Bhubaneswar
• Those at Bathinda (Punjab), Rae Bareli (UP), Mangalgiri (Andhra Pradesh), Kalyani (Bengal), Gorakhpur (UP), Kamrup (Assam) and Bilaspur (HP) will be operational by 2020-21 
• In pipeline are AIIMS at Samba (Jammu), Awantipora (Kashmir), Deogarh (Jharkhand). Site selection process for AIIMS in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Gujarat will start soon