To tackle faculty crisis, govt mulls amending AIIMS Act

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 16

With six new AIIMS reeling under severe faculty shortage, the Centre is mulling ways to address emerging challenges around these institutes and may draft fresh guidelines soon on their administration, recruitment and financing.

The Central Institute Body of all AIIMS institutions met in the capital today for the first time to discuss pressing problems being faced in operationalising new AIIMS at Patna, Bhopal, Raipur, Jodhpur, Rishikesh and Bhubaneshwar. The Central Institute Body, a new arrangement, was constituted earlier this year to coordinate the working of all AIIMS institutions even though each of these is autonomous having been established under an Act of Parliament.

The issue of faculty crunch is learnt to have come up in a major way at the meeting with the government’s last data available on faculty situation showing that only 31 per cent of the vacancies had been filled.

“AIIMS-Delhi has 42 functional super-specialties. Each new AIIMS has to reach that level. This is the challenge,” a Health Ministry official said.

The meeting was attended by directors of all new AIIMS with Randeep Guleria, the Director of AIIMS-Delhi, holding a key post as member secretary of the Central Institute Body. The body has 18 members, which include three MPs — Ramesh Bidhuri and Parvesh Verma of the BJP and Ram Gopal Yadav of the SP (none turned up for the crucial meeting). With six new AIIMs still awaiting faculty, the government is going ahead with plans of opening new AIIMs at Malkangiri, Nagpur and Kalyani by 2019.

“These institutes take time to stabilise. AIIMS-Delhi was conceived in the 1960s, but became what it is only in the 1980s,” an official said.

Vacancies hit health services

1,830 posts of faculty (305 per institute) for the six new AIIMS mentioned below: 

Jodhpur, Rajasthan Patna, Bihar,Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand 

• 583 Faculty appointed* 
  

• 61.85% Vacancy rate

Non-teaching posts 

• 22,600 Sanctioned 
  

• 3,800 filled

• Worst-affected 

• 52 faculty posts filled in Patna

• 74 of 305 filled in Raipur 

• 60 posts filled in Bhopal 

Measures taken... 

• Health Ministry approved appointments on contractual and deputation basis

• Allowed visiting faculty at remuneration of Rs 6,000 a day for professors and Rs 4,000 a day for associate professors

• Introduced new scheme to allow all AIIMS PG passouts to be appointed as faculty at AIIMS of their choice, but plan has so far got lukewarm response