5 buildings to come up on medical college campus

Coimbatore: Construction of five buildings that can accommodate 250 MBBS students began on the Coimbatore Medical College campus on Friday.
Chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami conducted bhoomi puja for the work through video conference. Coimbatore collector K Rajamani conducted a ceremony here . Once the new infrastructure is in place, the medical council of India (MCI) will permit the college to increase MBBS student intake from 150 to 250, medical education department sources said.
The Rs 80 crore project includes construction of a four-storey institutional block that will house lecture halls, examination halls and demonstration halls. Two four-storey buildings will function as hostels for boys and girls. There will also be a three-storey administrative block and a two-storey library.
“Once the work is over, we will submit a formal application to MCI for an increase in intake. They will inspect the infrastructure and give us the go-ahead if they are satisfied,” CMCH dean Dr P Kalidas said. “The public works department plans to complete the construction in a little more than six months.”
Coimbatore Medical College had applied to increase student intake to 250 in January 2015. But MCI rejected the applications after finding it lacking in infrastructure in the form of faculty, books in laboratories and overcrowded girls’ hostels. Since then, the college has been taking measures to rectify the shortcomings.
The state and the Centre later sanctioned Rs 1.2 crore per extra student for increasing infrastructure, of which 60% will be from the Centre and the rest from the state government. Of that Rs 120 crore, Rs 80 crore has been sanctioned for the buildings.