Karnataka HC issues notice over delay in upgrading Sirsi Hospital to 250 Beds
Bengaluru- The Karnataka High Court issued a notice to the state government on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) concerning the recruitment of doctors, specialists, and staff, as well as the proposed upgradation of Pandit Public Hospital in Sirsi to a 250-bed facility as announced in the 2020-21 budget.
The petition was filed by the Ananta Murthy Hegde Charitable Trust. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice K.S. Hemalekha passed the order after hearing the petition.
Through the petition, the petitioner stated that in the budget for the year 2020-21, the State Government had specifically announced that the Pandit General Hospital in Sirsi would be expanded from 100 beds to 250 beds.
The announcement was made taking into account the extremely dilapidated condition of the hospital buildings and the large number of patients arriving from the Sirsi, Siddapur, Hangal, and Mundgod taluks.
The cost of this proposal was ₹26.08 crore, which included an MRI scanner worth ₹15 crore and a CT scanner worth ₹1.7 crore. This project was scheduled to be completed within three years, and the tender was finalised accordingly. However, even five years after the announcement, the construction work on the hospital remains incomplete, and only 80 per cent of the work has been finished so far, according to TNIE.
It has been alleged that the decision taken in 2024, to revise the proposal by reducing the list of approved medical equipment from ₹26 crore to ₹5.20 crore and removing essential devices such as MRI and CT scanners, is unjust, discriminatory, and detrimental to public health.
Therefore, by way of an interim prayer, the petitioner requested that the State be directed to initiate the immediate temporary recruitment of doctors and specialists in the Departments of Cardiology and Neurology, to ensure that emergency cases arriving from the Uttara Kannada district are not neglected and that precious lives may be saved.
