The state government on Friday admitted that the eye bank of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) has been defunct for the past one decade. Animal and fish resources minister Giriraj Singh made the candid confession in the Assembly.

Replying to a question of Vinod Naryan Jha of the BJP during the question hour on behalf of health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Singh said: “No transaction of eyes had taken place either in the PMCH or the private eye hospital, Viraytan in Rajgir, for over a decade.”

Singh attributed the problem to lack of eye donation. “We have promoted eye donations through advertisements in the media. But no eye has been donated at the PMCH,” Singh said, urging the MLAs to promote eye donation in their respective constituencies.

Countering the minister, the BJP MLA said he knew about two specific cases when the PMCH team did not go to collect the eyes of the deceased who pledged to donate them. Taken aback, the minister said he would look into the cases referred to by the BJP MLA and conceded that there was no technician in the PMCH eye bank at present. “The process of appointing technicians is on,” Singh said.

Senior Congress MLA Sadanand Singh asked if a system of preserving eyes was in place and a register of persons who were seeking eyes was maintained. The minister insisted that the system very much existed in the eye bank.

Speaker Uday Narain Choudhary said the MLAs should take the lead in announcing donation of their eyes. “I will show the way,” he said. Choudhary also asked the minister to take steps towards making the eye bank functional.

Power tariff

In response to a query of Akhtarul Imam of the RJD, energy minister Vijendra Prasad Yadav ruled out the possibility of increasing subsidy to keep the power tariff the same.

“The Bihar State Electricity Board is a commercial organisation and should be run like one,” he said when the RJD MLA pointed out that the BSEB had sought a steep rise in power tariff from Bihar State Electricity Regulatory Commission.