CM threatens to take over Shanta Palampur Medical College Project

Shimla May 3 (UNI) Threatening to take over the Palampur Medical College and Hospital project from the Vivekanand Trust, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said it was a shining example of corruption by former union minister Shanta Kumar.

Addressing a press conference here, he said the medical college had failed to come up after so many years and was turning out to be a shining example of corruption by the senior leader.

Mr Singh said the government had provided land estimated to be over Rs 50 crore at Re one for Mr Kumar's dream project, but it has been converted into a private trust, which was employing several of his relatives.

Despite huge contributions raised from the public, the medical college has not come up, he said.

''The government has written to the trust, a month ago, asking for details about the funding and status of the project and no response been received from the management of the trust,'' he said.

The Chief Minister said the government was interested in establishing a medical college at Palampur at the earliest and there were many applications pending for permission of establishing medical colleges in the state.

In case, the trust was not able to fulfill the objective, the trust should hand over the project to the government so that we could hand it over to a deserving party, which could complete the project in time and provide services to the people, he said.

Accusing both former chief ministers Prem Kumar Dhumal and Shanta Kumar of double standards, he said the charges being levelled by them were utterings by ''frustrated minds''.

UNI