The Telangana Government has filed a counter-affidavit in the High Court making a case for demolishing the old Osmania General Hospital building and building a new facility with 1812 beds in the hospital complex.
The High Court is hearing a batch of petitions on OGH with all the petitioners making a case for construction of a new building for improving healthcare. The key difference is while one set of petitions are for preserving the listed OGH building, another set is for demolishing everything in the complex and constructing a new complex.
While the state had earlier filed a memo citing the deliberations of a high-powered committee including public representatives and state government officials, the HC had asked for a counter-affidavit to be filed in the Public Interest Litigation filed by the Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association.
The State government has made a case for demolishing all the buildings in the complex and building a new hospital with a hostel facility for post-graduate students, multi-storey car parking, and other requirements like mortuary, liquid oxygen facility, laundry and electric substations. The affidavit reaches a conclusion that “the net area of Osmania General Hospital is 22.203 acres. Thus, the available land after the demolition of all buildings including the old building will be just sufficient to construct new building with 1,812 beds.”
The counter-affidavit includes parts of the report of a committee that included an expert from the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad and the Archaeological Survey of India. This committee had suggested that the building: “As it is a listed heritage building, appropriate conservation repairs are to be taken up under supervision of Conservation Architect.”
However, the counter-affidavit overlays this report with another committee meeting on July 7, 2023, at the Telangana Secretariat which had the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Finance Ministry in attendance. This committee was briefed about the shortcomings in the OGH by the Superintendent of the facility and the shortfall of beds and inadequacy of care.
“Since the old building is situated in the middle of the land parcel, development of alternative hospital is indeed impossible unless this old building was removed. There was consensus that keeping the old building which was not fit for a hospital, at the cost of poor hospital services was inappropriate,” says the affidavit laying out the stand of the government.
