Doon Medical College may be built at Jhajra

Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, August 30

The complete Doon Medical College may eventually come up at Jhajra in Dehradun. The land acquired by the state Department of Medical Education at Dehra Khas here to set up the college may not be adequate. The department has been looking for land for the past three years.

Meanwhile, the Department of Medical Education has applied to the Medical Council of India (MCI) for permission to start the academic session in 2016-2017 and is aiming to get around 150 seats.

Uttarakhad can acquire 20 acres in two tracts for the college as the MCI has relaxed rules for hill states for setting up medical colleges. But the land tracts should be within a radius of 10 km of each other.

The government intends to use the relaxations to build the hospital and the college at two places for receiving approval for starting the academic session in 2016-2017.

The department is already in the process of upgrading the existing Doon Hospital (district) to serve as hospital for the medical college. In that case, the District Hospital will be shifted to Jhajra. Later the department intends to move the medical college to Jhajra and the Doon Hospital to where it is now.

The department officials said as Doon Hospital doctors were not happy with the move to shift the District Hospital to Jhajra, the government would do it temporarily to get the MCI permission and then build the complete Doon Medical College at Jhajra.