Patna, Feb. 16: The high court today expressed displeasure over the tardy pace of construction of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the state capital, leading to cost escalation of crores of rupees.

A division bench comprising Justice P.C. Verma and Justice A K Trivedi made an oral observation that why not the entire matter be probed by the CBI.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by Council for Protection of Public Rights and Welfare’s secretary and advocate M.P. Gupta seeking expeditious completion of the project as the cons- truction work was not completed within a stipula- ted time.

The court wanted to know about the person/agency responsible for the delay in the super speciality hospital getting operational. “This caused a cost escalation of hundreds of crores (Rs 332 crore to Rs 850 crore), in seven years,” the court said.

“This PIL is pending since 2005. Three chief justices have been transferred or changed since then. Who controls the contractors? It looks like as if it is an orchestrated scam,” the bench told the Centre’s counsel, Vinay Kumar Pandey.

Piqued over the Centre’s repeated failure to come out with a concrete reply on when the hospital would be made operational, the court asked: “Should not the entire matter be handed over to the CBI for investigation?”

The court asked the petitioners to make all the contractors as parties to the case and also issued showcause notices to the contractors, asking them to furnish their responses by March 14 as to why not the quantum of penalty be raised from the current one per cent of the contract amount to the actual level of cost escalation (This means that if a project’s cost escalates by Rs 100 crore, the contractor would have to pay the entire Rs 100 crore).

The court yesterday asked the Centre to file its reply on cost escalation, whether or not the outpatient department and if the emergency and trauma centre could be started from March 1.