Students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Patna, called off their protest on Tuesday after assurances from Union health ministry additional secretary Arun Panda that the Centre would try its best to address their problems.
Panda promised a review meeting in January to take stock of the progress of work at the health-care hub.
"Arun Panda reached on Monday and visited the campus to look into the problems," said an AIIMS student.
"He knew about waterlogging on the campus during monsoon. Today (Tuesday) he was ready with all the answers. For the first 30 minutes, he gave us an insight on the various problems and how the ministry would go about to address the issues. He said the ministry would give ultimatum to the contractors (looking after construction work at the hospital) to expedite the work."
The student said Panda had asked them about their priorities, so that the government could initiate the work accordingly.
"We have been told that a review meeting will be held in January. Either Panda or (Union health ministry) joint secretary Sunil Sharma will visit the Patna campus," he said.
Panda refused to commit to a deadline to start the long-pending trauma and emergency services at the hospital. People of Bihar are still dependent on AIIMS-Delhi for specialised treatments.
"AIIMS-Delhi took 60 years to achieve this reputation," said Panda.
"The hospital started in 1956. Nobody should compare AIIMS-Delhi with AIIMS-Patna. We were serious about AIIMS-Patna from the beginning like we are serious about all other AIIMS. After today's discussion with the students, our priorities have been fixed. In hospital and college, what infrastructure has to be created first and how to achieve the job in a phase-wise manner has been sorted."
His one-and-a-half-hour interaction with students, however, started only after high drama. Sources said the AIIMS-Patna administration had on Monday sent mails to the students asking them to meet Panda only in a group of five or six for Tuesday's meeting but the students wanted to meet him collectively.
When Panda reached AIIMS around 9.30am, he went straight to the director's chamber and was waiting for the students who did not budge. Finally, Panda had to meet the students collectively.
Sources said the students did not want to meet Panda in a small group because they feared being singled out by the administration.
"On Monday we received a mail through which we were threatened to be detained for carrying out anti-institute activity as the administration claimed that we have disturbed the patient-care services, but we did not hamper outpatient department services and carried out our protest peacefully by boycotting the classes. Students were also called out individually and threatened. So, we collectively wanted to meet the official," said an MBBS student.
The students raised the issue of delay in recruitment of faculty, lack of clinical teaching space and delay in starting the trauma and emergency wings of the hospital, sources said.
"We suggested to him (Panda) to reduce the number of people in the 30-member national committee that recruits faculty members of AIIMS," said another MBBS student. "We also asked him to conduct fresh recruitments and not to implement the orders of the last recruitment process, which was stalled by the ministry midway because of irregularities on the administration's part."
The faculty also had a 30-minute closed-door meeting with Panda where they apprised him on the delay in faculty recruitment and promotions, sources said.
Some faculty members claimed they were not given enough time to raise certain issues.
