VSS Medical College and Hospital, Burla. Telegraph picture

Cuttack, Nov. 16: The state government has continued to skirt the issue of lack of boundary wall at the VSS Medical College and Hospital in Burla even as it claimed before the high court that steps were being taken to remove encroachment and construct a gate.

Orissa high court is adjudicating on a PIL along with intervention petitions filed by junior doctors in connection with unauthorised occupants and lack of a boundary wall at the hospital.

The petitions mentioned that VSS had no boundary wall. The medical college and hospital had no common campus. Also, there was no compound wall either of the hospital or medical college. Huge areas in both the medical college and the hospital remained encroached. Even the hospital, the medical college and its hostels had been completely separated from one another by illegal establishments.

Consequently, there has been “free access” and “unauthorised interference” by outsiders on the premises of the medical college and hospital, of which the “doctors and students have become the victims”.

In an affidavit filed yesterday, state health and family welfare department’s commissioner-cum-secretary Anu Garg said: “The district administration is taking steps for removal of encroachment from the medical college and hospital through trying to settle issues amicably with vendors who have shops over there for the last 15 to 20 years.”

“The students demanded construction of a gate there. The gate’s design has been made and some Rs 40 lakh has been sanctioned for the construction. A tender will be floated soon,” Garg said in the affidavit. He, however, evaded the problem related to the lack of a boundary wall.

Official records submitted in court along with the petitions filed by the junior doctors, however, indicated that a decision was taken to complete the boundary wall within 2007-08. The proceedings of a meeting at VSS on April 26, 2007, indicated that the then principal secretary of the state health and family welfare department had given assurance that “funds will be allocated within the last week of June 2007”.

“It was agreed that if required, funds would be organised from the Swasthya Bikas Samiti of the VSS Medical College Hospital. The collector has already given a cheque for Rs 10 lakhs to the executive engineer of the roads and buildings department. The principal secretary of the health and family welfare department informed that an allotment of Rs 80 lakh was readily available for the purpose,” a copy of the proceedings reveals.