NEW DELHI: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it has provided land to the authorities concerned for construction of 80 pagoda-like night shelters for the patients’ kin to save them from cold, while the hospital itself is undertaking the construction of a 3,000-bed rest house on a two-acre land.
The hospital’s counsel told a bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia that while the land was provided to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) as an immediate step, the construction of the rest house was a long-term measure. The counsel said this in response to court’s January 14 directions, made while hearing a suo motu petition on the state patients’ kind lived on the streets outside AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital.
The counsel said that the rest house has been proposed in Ansari Nagar West and will be constructed with the help of an NGO from Ahmedabad.
The DUSIB said that 20 new pagodas were set up near AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital, and more would be erected soon. Twenty tents each were also erected near Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and the hospitals attached to Lady Hardinge Medical College, the DUSIB counsel told the court.
The HC urged the members of Delhi High Court Bar Association to raise funds for the rest house in the same manner it did during the Punjab floods. “Activate members of the bar so that some kind of fund is donated,” the chief justice said, while asking all the authorities to cooperate with AIIMS in the construction of the rest house.