Silchar, Nov. 8: The Congress government in Mizoram has cleared a proposal to set up a full-fledged medical college with a state-of-the-art hospital tagged on to it in a “shortest possible time”.

According to health minister Lalrinliana, this would be the first medical college in the remote and backward border state with a population of around nine lakh.

Lalrinliana said this college and hospital would rise from what he has described as the “ruins” of the previous state government’s much vaunted referral hospital at Falkawn near the hilltop capital town of Aizawl.

Speaking at the just concluded autumn session of the Assembly, the health minister said a preliminary estimate had put the total cost to set up a modern hospital at Rs 400 crore “at its highest”.

He said the government had already constituted a state-level committee of experts to explore all the possible avenues of funding for this proposed medical institute, including the Union government grants and also the public-private partnership possibilities for setting up this college.

The referral hospital at Falkawn, which the Congress government in its previous rule had mooted and the two successive Mizo National Front governments between 1998 and 2008 were giving shape, could not make any headway as the official agencies in executing it had deviated from the original plan.

Lalrinliana alleged that there were also the “traces of corruption” while building the referral hospital and also there was “gross violation of the guidelines set for raising this hospital building”.

As a result the total capacity of this hospital had to be drastically cut to a paltry 50 seats from its originally envisaged capacity to treat 300 patients at a time.

The referral hospital was designed to treat only those patients with a record of difficult diseases getting their primary treatment in the government hospitals and clinics as well as the private healthcare institutions.

The minister also confirmed that the health directorate had declined to take over the hospital from the state PWD as some of the hospital buildings appeared to be too “weak” and the hospital itself had a “dilapidated look”.

The health department officials in Aizawl, on being questioned by this correspondent, admitted that a departmental probe was on into the alleged insta- nces of corruption while implementing the referral hospital.