Patna: The Patna High Court today directed the Centre to make the proposed Jayaprakash Narayan AIIMS in the city functional by October 2, 2012.
A division bench comprising justices Prakash Chandra Verma and Aditya Kumar Trivedi directed the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry to ensure that the AIIMS being constructed in Bihar''s capital was made operational by that time."Any failure in this regard will be treated as a matter of contempt," the bench warned.
The Council for Protection of Civil Rights and Liberty had filed a PIL in 2005 requesting the court to order necessary direction for construction of Jayaprakash Narayan Institute of Medical Sciences at Phulwarisharif in Patna, the foundation-stone of which was laid in October 2004.
The Centre had at that time promised that the proposed hospital would be made functional in the next three years, but nothing was done.After the court''s intervention, the state government provided 100 acres of land for the construction of JPN AIIMS, the petitioner''s council M P Gupta said.In the course of his argument today, Gupta alleged that the Centre had adopted dilly-dallying attitude towards completing the building for AIIMS and sought the court''s directive in this regard.
(PTI)