Medical college project misses second deadline

Parveen Arora

Karnal, February 10

The much-awaited project of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Medical University, Kutail, in Karnal, has again missed the deadline of January 31, 2023. It was the second deadline that the construction agency has missed so far, said an official.

Earlier, it missed the deadline of September, 2022. Even after the lapse of two deadlines, the work on this project is yet to be completed. As per the officials, nearly 82 per cent of work is complete so far on this project, he added.

The authorities said the agency had sought permission for the extension of the deadline to August 2023, which was now pending with the state government.

“The deadline was January 31, 2023, but the agency could not accomplish the work, so it has sought an extension of the date for the construction. We have forwarded our request to the higher authorities who have further sent it to the government,” said Dr Jagdish Dureja, Director, Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC)-cum-controlling authority of the medical university.

CM Khattar had made an announcement on the university on December 13, 2014. It was aimed at imparting medical education of the highest standard in super-specialty and postgraduate medical education along with providing high-quality patient care. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of this project from Kurukshetra in a virtual mode on February 12, 2019, which would be constructed on 138 acres at the cost of Rs 761.51 crore.

The project was awarded to an agency in December 2018 and it had started work in September 2020 and the deadline was January 31, 2022, but still a lot of work was pending, said sources.

The university will have the facilities of super-specialty hospital with 750 beds, instead of 530 proposed earlier. The academic block for postgraduate/postdoctoral teaching, along with research departments such as biotechnology, experimental medicine, advance research centre in genetics, immunology and virology would be constructed here. It will also have other educational institutions such as dental college, pharmacy college, mental health institute and sports medicine.