STATE TIMES NEWS
KATHUA: Hitting out at Congress for raking up the AIIMS issue, BJP State General Secretary and MLA Kathua, Rajiv Jasrotia on Monday said that credit goes to Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh for putting the cause of AIIMS for Jammu before Central Government vigorously and properly.
He demanded an enquiry into delay in establishing AIIMS sanctioned 10 years ago. Jasrotia, while referring to the history of AIIMS, said that the foundation for AIIMS was laid 10 years ago during Vajpayee government when Sushma Swaraj was the Union Health Minister.
Amid the raging controversy over setting up of AIIMS in Kashmir Valley, Jasrotia said that AIIMS was always meant for Jammu.
“Right from the beginning, the demand for AIIMS is always meant for Jammu and is inspired by the realisation that there is a huge regional imbalance of health care services between Kashmir and Jammu. There is an urgent need to set up an AIIMS in Jammu,” he maintained.
Clearing the air on the prestigious medical institute, Jasrotia said that the proposal for an AIIMS was earlier also mooted during the NDA rule, but the proposal was not seriously carried forward during the following 10 years of the UPA rule.
Therefore, he said, the sanction of an AIIMS was, in fact, a logical culmination of the process that had got “unduly stalled”.
Jasrotia adding further said that in the ensuing confusion, several of the other political groups and parties, which were responsible for having delayed both the IIT as well as AIIMS for Jammu, were now trying to protect themselves and pleading for the cause of Jammu.
Taking a dig at the Congress and the National Conference (NC), he said, the people of Jammu needed to be made aware of the sequence of events over the last 40 years which resulted in disparity in health care delivery.
The demand for AIIMS in Jammu was based on sound logic, academic reasoning and ground evidence, said Jasrotia and added that it deserved to be viewed above political lines.
He said those trying to fish in the troubled waters would do well to remember that the BJP and its associated organisations had been fighting for the cause of AIIMS in Jammu for the last 40 years and would not allow the “upstarts or the new starters to hijack this demand”.
He made it clear that BJP is not averse to opening of AIIMS in any other part of the State but it will also be established in Jammu at same time.
