Jamshedpur: East Singhbhum district administration on Tuesday transferred 20 acres at Ardeshir Dalal Memorial Hospital in Baridih, to Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) for a cutting-edge private medical college, a joint venture of MAHE and Tata Steel.
It also ordered Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee special officer to clear the medical college's building plans at the earliest.
If all goes well, construction of the Rs 200-crore medical college, hostel and faculty residences will start from June to welcome the first batch of 150 MBBS students in 2019.
The steel city will get advanced healthcare benefits through specialists of Manipal Hospitals who would visit Jamshedpur as faculty of the medical college and consultants at Tata Main Hospital (TMH). According to an agreement between the two partners, the medical college will use TMH in Bistupur as its internship hospital and also add 150 beds to TMH's current 914.
An hour-long tripartite meeting between the district administration, Tata Steel (which had also been leased the 20 acre land by the state prior to Tuesday's transfer) and MAHE was held at collectorate on Tuesday on land transfer and other issues.
East Singhbhum DC Amit Kumar seemed happy with the progress of the work.
"The land transfer process is complete and JNAC special officer will see that the building plans get necessary approval at the earliest," he said.
"MAHE officials will submit details of land, approved building plans, details of TMH infrastructure (beds etc) to the state health department for formal approval. MAHE officials will submit the documents to Medical Council of India before July 7, 2018, for a provisional nod for undergraduate (MBBS) course in the 2019-2020 session. The final nod for a period of five years will be granted after a visit by a high-level MCI team here in November 2018," he added.
Officer on special project, Manipal Education and Medical Group, Jagdish Rajan, told this paper that seats would be filled through NEET for the 2019-20 session and the Manipal Group would grant scholarships to 10 ST/SC students based on NEET rankings.
"We will invest in 150 beds at TMH to meet MCI norms and develop it into a secondary care hospital. Our globally renowned specialists will come as faculty and offer services at TMH once infrastructure (college) is built," Rajan said.
MCI conditions for a medical college have been met by MAHE, the DC also said.
"The medical college will use TMH (Bistupur) as its internship hospital, less than 8km from its Baridih medical college, meeting MCI norms of the hospital-college distance not exceeding 10km. MCI stipulates 15 acres for a college, Manipal will have 20," he said.