Nirmala Sitharaman twists facts on sanctioning medical colleges to Telangana

Kishan Reddy claimed that the Modi government had set up 90 medical colleges in the country in three years, of which nine were in Telangana. Interestingly, only one of these, the AIIMS Bibinagar is of the Centre.

Hyderabad: Union Ministers appear to have made it a habit to twist facts and mislead the public when it comes to Central allocations to Telangana, especially in connection with sanctioning medical colleges to the State. On Thursday, union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman criticized the State for pointing out that it was not sanctioned a single medical college even when the Centre had sanctioned 157 medical colleges across the country.

She claimed that when the Centre had asked for the list of places for medical colleges, the State had listed Karimnagar and Khammam. But these places already had medical colleges, she said. This is in stark contrast to what her own Cabinet colleagues said earlier.

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In March last year, in response to a question from A Revanth Reddy in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said the Centre had not received any proposal for new government medical colleges in Telangana. In December 2021 as well, responding to a question from N Uttam Kumar Reddy, Dr Pravin Pawar said no proposal was received from Telangana for medical colleges under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme.

The fact is that in 2019, the then Health Minister C Laxma Reddy had repeatedly written to Dr Harshvardhan, urging him to upgrade district hospitals, particularly in Karimnagar and Khammam to medical colleges under CSS. The union Minister’s reply was that it would not be possible to cover Telangana in phases 1 and 2 of the CSS and that it would be considered in Phase 3. However, Phase 3 of the CSS scheme was approved in August 2019 with a completion timeline of 2023-24. But even three years later, Harshvardhan’s promise has remained on paper.

There are more. For instance, just a couple of months ago, in December, union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy claimed that the Centre wanted to establish a medical college in every district of Telangana with at least two union Health Ministers J P Nadda and Dr Harshavardhan, writing to the Telangana government to send proposals as per the prescribed format but there was no response.

Interestingly, Kishan Reddy, in a tweet in July 2021, claimed that the Modi government had set up 90 medical colleges in the country in three years, of which nine were in Telangana. Interestingly, only one of these, the AIIMS Bibinagar is of the Centre, while five were private, and three were established by the State government itself at Siddipet, Nalgonda and Suryapet.