Demolition begins at 120 year old general hospital building on PMCH campus

Patna: Work began on Monday to demolish the historic Hathwa Ward of the old General Hospital building at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) campus, with a bulldozer tearing through the more than 120-year-old landmark, which was visited by Mahatma Gandhi in May 1947.

Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) Alumni Association, heritage lovers, Gandhians, and several eminent doctors in the past few years have been appealing to the Bihar government to spare the iconic old Bankipore General Hospital Building, and a few other historic structures on the campus, to instead preserve them as “memories of its glorious past”, reports PTI.

The Old buildings of the PMCH — set up over 101 years ago as erstwhile Bihar & Orissa’s first medical college — are being demolished in phases to make way for modern, high-rise structures on its sprawling campus on the banks of Ganga in the heart of the capital city.

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The institution was originally christened as the Prince of Wales Medical College, was established in 1925 to perpetuate the memory of the visit of the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) to Patna in December 1921. It was renamed PMCH a few decades after India’s Independence.

The college itself had evolved from the Temple Medical School set up in Patna in 1874. The Bankipore General Hospital (later Patna General Hospital) was constructed sometime around 1904, and was attached to the school and subsequently to the college.

A few months ago, the nearly century-old first hostel of the PMCH — Old Boys Hostel — facing the old General Hospital building was razed as part of the redevelopment, triggering grief and nostalgia among many of its alumni members, from Bihar to the UK.

The demolition of the hostel took place just a couple of months after the 101st anniversary of the college was hosted in the Old Boys’ Hostel grounds.

Preparations to raze the old General Hospital building had been going on for the past few months, as its old doors and windows were pulled out to make way for the demolition.

The two-storey old Bankipore General Hospital is equipped with a British-era lift, and housed the Hathwa Ward (north wing) and Guzri Ward (south wing), and other medical wards on the ground and first floors of the building.

An iconic structure fronted with two-storey-tall, graceful Doric columns in the central portion formed the main facade of the building. While its ground floor was used as the office of the PMCH’s superintendent, its first floor is the old operation theatre, which was visited by Mahatma Gandhi in May 1947.

Nearly all wards and the Superintendent’s Office had been shifted to a cluster of new buildings in the PMCH campus, inaugurated in phases in the past two years.

The foundation stone of the mega redevelopment project of the PMCH was laid by then Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on February 8, 2021 on the campus.

As part of the revamp plan, a 5462-bed hospital complex will come up at the site at a cost of Rs 5,540 crore, and the project is expected to be completed in phases in seven years.

However, several members of the alumni who received education at this prestigious medical institution and are now serving in the US, the UK, and other countries, besides as doctors in the PMCH, have lamented that preservation of the famed heritage buildings of their institution has “not been factored” into the redevelopment project.

Gandhians and heritage lovers too had appealed in vain to save this iconic landmark and other heritage buildings of the campus, many of which have already been fully of partially razed.

Three months before India’s Independence, Mahatma Gandhi had visited the PMCH for an appendicitis surgery of his grand-niece Manu, and so worried Bapu was that he sat next to her, wearing a surgical mask and watched the entire procedure in the operation theatre located in the old General Hospital building, being razed currently.

“As proud alumni, we would request you (Bihar health minister) to take care of few heritage sites, so that they be left intact for future generations, to witness what it was in the early part of the last century, when this great institution was functioning. All great societies preserve heritage buildings,” PMCH Alumni Association’s then president, Dr Satyajeet Kumar Singh, had said at the function hosted in the campus to mark the 97th anniversary of the college in 2022, reports PTI.

The Administrative Building, which houses the historic plaque installed on the formal inauguration of the institution in 1927, and the neighbouring old Bankipore General Hospital building, should be preserved, as “memories of its glorious past”, he had said.

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