Patna, Nearly ten years after it was first announced in the 2015-16 Union Budget and following repeated delays across two general elections and three state assembly polls, construction work on the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Darbhanga in northern Bihar has finally begun in earnest.
The most visible signs of progress are the newly erected boundary wall along the Shobhan-Ekmi bypass and the skeletal framework of the main entrance gate. Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed the bhoomi pujan for the ₹1,264-crore project in November 2024, an event that had raised expectations of accelerated execution. More than a year later, those hopes are only now beginning to materialise.
Dr Madanand Kar, Executive Director of AIIMS Darbhanga, told , that while surface-level activity remains modest, substantial preparatory work has advanced rapidly in recent months. “Visibility may be less, but a lot is happening in the background,” he said. “You will see the full AIIMS before the next general election, and it will be dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister.”
Dr Kar expressed confidence that the entire project could be completed within three years of the start of main building construction, targeting operational status by April 2028. He attributed earlier delays to prolonged land acquisition, the onset of monsoon, and the Bihar assembly elections, which had paralysed administrative decision-making.
The master plan has been jointly prepared by IIT Delhi, IIT Roorkee and the School of Planning and Architecture. Notably, the boundary wall has been designed as a distinctive architectural feature rather than a mere perimeter structure. To avoid sequential delays, the tender process has been split into two parallel streams: boundary works and the main hospital complex.
According to Dr Kar, the state government is now actively addressing remaining bottlenecks, including relocation of high-tension power lines, construction of a four-lane approach road, and coordinated land-filling operations. “Once steady funding and timely approvals are in place, land-filling requirements are unlikely to slow the overall schedule,” he added.
The new 750-bed tertiary-care facility is expected to transform healthcare access across the Mithila region and neighbouring areas of Bihar, which have long lacked advanced medical infrastructure. If delivered on the revised timeline, AIIMS Darbhanga would mark one of the faster executions among the 22 AIIMS projects announced under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana since 2014.
