It was in the first week of March that the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa laid the foundation stone for the government medical colleges in Karur and Pudukottai through video conference from Chennai.
The medical college in Pudukottai is on the threshold of admitting 150 MBBS students from 2017-18 onwards and a team from Medical Council of India (MCI) is likely to visit the college for assessing the infrastructure shortly. However, the proposed medical college in Karur remains on paper. It is yet to take off apparently due to the stalemate over selection of land.
Previously, it was announced that the college would come up at Sanapiratti on 30.27 acres of land belonging to the Karur Municipality at an estimate of Rs.229.49 crore. The Karur Municipality had passed a resolution to facilitate the transfer of land to the Director of Medical Education. The Public Works Department (PWD) had awarded the contract to a private firm.
Prior to this, the State government had issued a GO for constructing the medical college at Kuppuchipalayam near Vangal, 10 km away from Karur. The land was “donated” by an individual when V. Senthil Balaji was Transport Minister. However, the Sanapirati site was chosen for the college soon after he was dropped from the cabinet. The Kuppuchipalayam site was rejected on the ground that it was far away from Karur. Moreover, the officials contended that Sanapirati was the perfect site for medical college as it was on heart of the city.
But, a group of persons are said to be lobbying for establishing the college at Kuppuchipalayam again now. Stating that a litigation pending before the Madras High Court Bench had forced the PWD to stop construction work, a senior official told ‘The Hindu’ that efforts were being made to vacate the stay. The matter was taken to the notice of senior officials. The officer said that there was no change in the government stand on setting up the college at Sanapiratti. It would be convenient to the people and sufficient space was available at Sanapiratti.
The officer said that 15 acres of land was enough for the government medical college. It could be in two locations. Of 15 acres, one plot should not be less than 10 acres and second plot should not be less than 5 acres. The distance between two pieces of land should not be more than 10 km. As far as Sanapiratti site was concerned, it matched all requirements.
