Bhopal AIIMS Gets New Director After Protest From Interns Who Marched to Delhi on Foot

Bhopal: After days of protest, AIIMS Bhopal has finally got a new director. The Centre on Tuesday appointed Dr Sarman Singh as the new head of the institute.

Singh has been serving as Head & Professor (Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Medicine) at AIIMS Bhopal. Before Singh's appointment, Dr Nitin Nagarkar, who is the director of AIIMS Raipur, held the additional charge of AIIMS Bhopal.

Singh will be in-charge of AIIMS Bhopal till November 8, 2021.

There were many protests demanding a full-time director for the institute. On May 3, two interns, Dr Sant Guru Prasad and Dr Chandan Kumar Aryan, embarked on a foot march from Bhopal to Delhi to highlight the issue and seek action from the Centre.

"The appointment of the director is a big relief for us and scores of other students. We have been demanding that the post of director and other vacancies in Bhopal AIIMS are filled up at the earliest. We will meet concerned authorities in Delhi in some time to press for our other demands," Prasad was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

He alleged that the absence of a full-time director was hampering the progress of the institute as those appointed on a temporary basis avoided taking decisions due to the fear of stoking a controversy.

Prasad, a resident of Nalanda in Bihar, said besides the director, the institute had 135 faculty members against a sanctioned strength of 305.

"Out of a total strength of 700 senior residents, just 130 are working at the AIIMS, Bhopal. Only 403 out of 960 beds are operational, which comes to around 40 per cent," he claimed.

The acting director of the institute, Nitin M Nagarkar, however, denied the charges levelled by Prasad and said that a section of students who had supplementaries in some subjects were behind the protest.

A supplementary exam is a form of further assessment offered to students who have not satisfied the passing criteria set by the educational institution for a particular course.

Prasad had called Nagarkar's accusations as "totally untrue".

After Dr Sandip Kumar, the then director of AIIMS Bhopal put in his papers in 2015, the central government did appoint Dr VK Sharma, a senior physician from AIIMS New Delhi, as the director at Bhopal-based hospital in 2016 but he refused to join.

The AIIMS Bhopal is one of the seven apex health care institutes established by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojna (PMSSY).