Deepa threatens stir over AIIMS-type hospital

5 October 2011

statesman news service
RAIGANJ, 5 OCT: The Congress MP from Raiganj and state Congress secretary, Mrs Deepa Das Munshi, has threatened to launch a stir on the AIIMS issue across north Bengal after the Puja. 
“We would involve the people of the entire north Bengal in the movement. The stir would continue till the state government clears its stance vis-a-vis the proposed AIIMS-type health institution in Raiganj,” she said yesterday at her residence at Sri Colony in Kalyaganj. However, in the same breath, she said that if the chief minister 
invited them for discussion they would accept it. 
The Puja at the residence of the former Union minister, Mr Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, at Kalyaganj, has remained confined to the bare rituals for the past three years. “We cannot go for ostentation as the senior Congress leader is still ailing. The Puja has become a mere ritual bereft of the gaiety previously associated with it. We hope he returns soon and the Pujas would get back its colour,” she said. 
Mr Das Munshi fell seriously ill during the Puja in 2008 and since he has remained confined within the hospital precincts. Now he is being treated at a health facility in New Delhi. 
Mrs Das Munshi said that the super-speciality hospital on the lines of the Delhi-based AIIMS was a dream nurtured by the ailing Congress leader. “He went out of his way to clear the decks for the institution which almost turned into an obsession with him. After he fell ill the Centre took initiatives on the matter and the project was approved by the Union Cabinet at a meeting in 2009. Accordingly, the land for housing the proposed institution was earmarked. But things seem to have got stuck at this point. The previous Left Front government kept sleeping when it came to acquiring lands and, more unfortunately, the present government is doing nothing, except for confounding confusion by sending conflicting signals from time to time,” she said.  
The Congress launched a mass signature campaign recently involving all the six districts of north Bengal to press for their demand. 
“The mass movement would be the next phase of the agitation,” she said, adding they would respond positively in case the state government invites them for consultation on the subject.