The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board at Katra in Jammu & Kashmir is setting up a medical institute at Kakrial, North Jammu. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 250 crore. J&K Governor Lt. Gen (Retd) S.K. Sinha laid the foundation stone for the institute which will be called Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence.
"The board will invite tenders for the project within a fortnight and work will commence soon thereafter," Dr. Ravishanker Sharma, Assistant CEO, Shri Mata Vaisno Devi Shrine Board, told Projectmonitor.
The medical institute will come up in three phases on 45 acres of land. It will be a multi-speciality hospital, which Jammu lacks at present, and will cater mainly to treatment of cancer. The institute will have 700 beds (200 beds in phase-I and 500 beds in phase-II). Phase-I, costing around Rs 42 crore, is expected to complete in 18 months from the date of commencement of work. Phase-II will have multi-speciality faculties and a school for nursing and paramedics. The cost of this phase is not decided.
In phase-III, the institute will be upgraded to a medical college and a college for research and academic excellence with graduate and postgraduate disciplines, affiliated to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University situated 38 km north of Jammu in the Trikuta foothills near the holy town of Katra in Udhampur district.
Meanwhile, 30 per cent of the work on construction of the university is over and the balance 70 per cent will be completed by 2010, Col. D.K. Kapur, Registrar, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, says. There has been an increase in student enrollment to the varsity. Work on the 1,000-seat auditorium in the university is also under way.
Of the proposed medical institute, Col. Kapur notes, "Our approach is purely holistic" and compared it to the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute in New Delhi.
On the shrine board's future plans, Dr. Ravishanker Sharma said that a passenger ropeway from Bhawan to Bhairon Mandir would be built.
Two ongoing projects, Gurukul, at Banganga in Charan Paduka area, and a spiritual growth centre with a 500-seat capacity auditorium, are also nearing completion.
(With inputs from Lalitha Rao)