Karnal Civil Hospital to come up on new 10-acre site

Parveen Arora

Karnal, December 30

The new building of the District Civil Hospital will now be constructed on 10 acres as overhead power lines have forced the authorities concerned to change the site of the ambitious project.

Construction likely to start soon

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We are hopeful that the construction work of the state-of-the-art 200-bed hospital will start soon. Dr Yogesh Sharma, Civil Surgeon

If sources in the administration are to be believed the project will be constructed under the Smart City Mission by Karnal Smart City Ltd.

Earlier, 13 acres were finalised for the project in Sector 32 around four years back and the land was allotted to the Health Department by the HSVP in October 2021.

As per the sources, when the construction plan was discussed, it was found that high-tension electric wires crossing over the land were a hurdle in the construction of vertical buildings. A large chunk of land could not be utilised due to overhead wires and poles. This hurdle forced the authorities concerned to explore

other options.

“We have yet to get an official communication, but 10 acres of land near the earlier proposed hospital site has been finalised,” said Dr Yogesh Sharma, Civil Surgeon.

“We are hopeful that the construction work of the state of the art 200-bed hospital will start soon,” he said.

The new hospital building will have a cath lab, facilities like MRI and CT scan, dialysis, the administration wing of the Civil Surgeon’s office and residential accommodation for the staff. Besides, there is a proposal to provide free shelter to attendants of patients on the hospital premises.

Presently, the Civil Hospital is running from an old building on the premises of the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC) where space crunch is a major hurdle in expanding services like the ICU and others.

The foundation stone of the present District Civil Hospital building was laid on April 17, 1911, by Major CH Buck IA, the then Deputy Commissioner, Karnal, (then a part of Punjab province). At that time, the hospital was named King Edward Memorial Hospital. City residents had pooled money and constructed an out-patient department (OPD) block.

In 2010, the previous Congress government had converted the Civil Hospital into the KCGMC. The land was handed over to the KCGMC in December 2012, but on April 13, 2017, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had announced to restart the Civil Hospital from the old building. After a gap of five years, the hospital started functioning in Karnal in December 2017.