The first steps towards the country?s biggest transplant hospital in Calcutta, complete with a bone and heart valve bank, were taken on Wednesday.

Two days after Metro reported the Hyderabad-based healthcare major?s plans of setting up a hospital on privately-acquired land, the state government offered K. Ravindranath, managing director, Global Hospital Group, prime land at a subsidised rate.

This followed a marathon meeting between Ravindranath and chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

?All I wanted was land near the airport, because this hospital will be targeted at medical tourists from Southeast Asia and Europe. The chief minister was kind enough to assure us just that,? Ravindranath later said.

During the meeting, the chief minister insisted that the hospital group ? which recently hit the headlines after a Pakistani boy underwent a heart transplant in Global Hyderabad ? set up research facilities and also train doctors on transplant and other modern methods of surgery.

?In the past few years, we have trained around 400 doctors from eastern India and we will do something similar in Calcutta,? assured Ravindranath.

The key facility at the hospital will be the city?s first bone and heart valve bank. The 10-acre campus will also house star-category hotels and malls.

Apart from separate wings devoted to all branches of medicine, the cornerstone of the hospital will be liver, heart, kidney and bone marrow transplant.

The hospital will have a 100-bed intensive cardiac care unit, ?the biggest and most modern in the country?, the surgical gastro-enterologist promised the chief minister. There would be free beds, too.

Elaborating on the ambitious plans for Calcutta, Ravindranath said the Global group would spend Rs 125 to Rs 175 crore on the project.

In the evening, Ravindranath set off for Hyderabad, promising to return for further talks with the government.

Around 12.30 pm, the chief minister sat with Ravindranath and representatives from the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), who have been instrumental in persuading Ravindranath to set up a hospital here, instead of Mumbai, where he had originally planned to open one.

?We are glad to have brought some quality investment into Bengal,? said urologist Amit Ghosh, also chairman (health) of BCCI.