Thoppur: It’s been seven years since the foundation stone for AIIMS Madurai was laid with much fanfare in Tamil Nadu’s town of Thoppur.
But the promised state-of-the-art campus is still far from ready, and the medical institute functions from a temporary campus of a government medical college in Ramanathapuram, about 140 km from Thoppur.
The fifth floor of the Ramanathapuram Government Medical College and Hospital has notices that read “allotted to AIIMS”. Three batches of white-coated students attend theory classes in various conference halls shared with the government medical college. For clinical duty, AIIMS Madurai students share rotations with the medical college trainees.
As a fresh batch of 50 MBBS students prepares to join the upcoming academic session, students from earlier batches are still grappling with makeshift arrangements and low clinical exposure, with AIIMS Madurai’s permanent home nowhere near ready.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for AIIMS Madurai at Thoppur, about 15 km from Madurai city, in January 2019.
The Tamil Nadu government handed over the land in 2020, and the institute was formally established through a gazette notification in July 2020. A loan agreement with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) followed in 2022.
However, construction only began in March 2024. The delays have sparked a political blame game. The Centre cites hurdles from the previous DMK government, including administrative and land issues, while DMK leaders blame delayed funding from the Centre.
With the permanent campus still under construction, students say they haven’t got the AIIMS experience they had expected, and their medical education is fragmented as their clinical training is split across three different institutions.
“Clinical training for us has been outsourced to three different institutions throughout our course. Initially at the Ramanathapuram Government Medical College and Hospital, and then later at JIPMER (Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research),” said a fifth-year AIIMS Madurai student.
“And now fifth-year students have been allocated postings at Madurai Medical College and Hospital for internship. We will be the first and probably the only batch of students that got admitted to AIIMS but never had any clinical experience in an AIIMS institution.”
The pandemic and, more recently, the conflict in West Asia have also contributed to the delays, which in turn have pushed up costs.
L&T, the company awarded the construction tender, is now racing to deliver at least one academic block, while two hostel facilities have been completed.
“The land is rocky, and it slows down construction work. The contractors have escalated the cost of the materials because of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We are trying our best to complete Phase I in the coming months,” said an L&T official.
Latest projections from L&T officials indicate key blocks will be partially completed by August 2026, with full completion possibly by December 2027 or early 2028. Classes are expected to start on campus in September-October 2026.
“We have already moved the first batch in March this year. The management plans to shift two existing batches to the hostel facilities completed on the Thoppur campus. The first batch will be undertaking its internship at the Madurai Medical College and Hospital,” Deputy Director Rex Phillip told ThePrint.
This move aims to free up space at the temporary Ramanathapuram setup for the incoming batch. The office of the dean, Dr Ganesh Babu, and other officials have also confirmed that these arrangements are in place.
“We have six classrooms, two laboratories and one library in the temporary Ramanathapuram campus. The classes for the new batch will be conducted in the same block of the Ramanathapuram Medical College,” an AIIMS official told ThePrint.
“A new building on the campus will be used for additional classrooms so that there are adequate classrooms for the students. This arrangement is only for one more year,” the official added.
AIIMS degree without AIIMS campus
For the first batch, which is now completing five years of the course, the AIIMS experience has been more in spirit. Students have never stepped foot into a dedicated AIIMS facility and were trained at JIPMER Puducherry for a month.
The temporary campus at Ramanathapuram government college has air-conditioned rooms, shared labs and classrooms, but it falls short of the envisioned dedicated AIIMS facility.
Students, speaking cautiously, say that while they knew of the delay in the construction of AIIMS Madurai, it is taking longer than expected.
“The lack of a proper AIIMS facility and consistent clinical exposure has been a major challenge. As future doctors, we need to experience handling a variety of cases, which is not possible in a rural location of a medical College in Ramanathapuram,” said one student, requesting anonymity.
“Clinical duty and exposure to labs help, but nothing replaces the environment we were hoping for at an AIIMS institution,” the student added.
While advanced diagnostics, research-integrated learning and high-volume patient interaction define AIIMS institutions in the rest of the country, students say their training remains fragmented.
Students hesitate to voice their concerns freely after initial protests in 2024 over the lack of basic infrastructure for their classes.
Other issues, such as a lack of coordination with authorised officials due to language barriers, accommodation challenges and the absence of a dedicated facility for AIIMS, were also raised.
Many complaints, such as infrastructure arrangements of separate classrooms and laboratories, were addressed after the agitation, but the delay has remained a constant challenge.
When ThePrint visited four years ago, the Thoppur site was little more than barren land behind compound walls. Today, activity has picked up, and an academic block is nearing completion, while two hostel facilities for the first batch have been completed.
But completion of the entire campus remains distant. While the students of the first batch have been shifted to the hostels that have been completed, access to these blocks amidst ongoing construction is not easy.
While the Madurai AIIMS project is still not complete, Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay pushed for another AIIMS in Coimbatore during his last visit to Delhi.
Officials remain optimistic that the partial infrastructure will ease the transition. For now, the first batch of graduates will be moved to the Madurai Medical College for their internship. But by the time they graduate, they may still not have seen a fully functional AIIMS campus.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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