Patna: Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) director S.C. Rajeev inspected the ongoing construction at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Patna, on Monday.

According to sources, Rajeev came to inspect whether construction firm BL Kashyap & Sons had fulfilled the work target or not as promised by the firm earlier.

Most of the construction work related to outpatient and indoor patient departments were either complete or nearing completion. Rajeev will now have a joint meeting with the AIIMS-Patna administration and officials of BL Kashyap & Sons on Tuesday.

"The construction firm officials acquainted Rajeev that the work regarding the outpatient department building was almost complete and only the lift installation work remained to be completed. That too has been started. They also informed that they were going to handover five floors of the D-block building which would have the indoor patient department," said a hospital source.

Officials of BL Kashyap said once the five floors of the D-block are handed over, the total number of beds in the indoor wing of the hospital would be around 500. Right now there are around 250 beds. "We are also going to handover block A and block B buildings by March 2018, which would house 20 operation theatres among other things. At present, eight operation theatres are running. Once this is done no construction work would be left unfinished by BL Kashyap & Sons," said the source.

The lack of floor space has been touted as a major hindrance behind delay in fully operating AIIMS-Patna. The AIIMS administration has been claiming that the construction firm was delaying its work because of which it was not getting enough floor space.

"Now that the construction has been expedited, the faculty recruitment process should speed up. The AIIMS-Patna now has only 54 doctors against the sanctioned strength of 305. For a fully operational AIIMS, all posts needed to be filled," said an AIIMS official.