NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, JAN 12
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated 11 new medical colleges in Tamil Nadu and a new campus of the Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) via video conferencing on Wednesday.
The new medical colleges have been established at an estimated cost of about Rs 4,000 crore, out of which around Rs 2,145 crore has been provided by the Union government and the rest by the Tamil Nadu government.
Augmenting health infrastructure & celebrating culture of Tamil Nadu. https://t.co/a3BoaJzmjK
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 12, 2022
The districts in which the new Medical Colleges are being established are Virudhunagar, Namakkal, The Nilgiris, Tiruppur, Thiruvallur, Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Kallakurichi, Ariyalur, Ramanathapuram and Krishnagiri.
Establishment of these medical colleges is in line with the Prime Minister’s constant endeavour to promote affordable medical education and improve health infrastructure in all parts of the country.
- A support of over Rs 3,000 crore would be provided to Tamil Nadu in the next five years for establishing/ Urban Health & Wellness Centres, District Public Health labs and Critical Care Blocks across the state: Prime Minister
- In the last seven years, the number of medical colleges has gone up to 596, an increase of 54%
- Medical Under Graduate and Post Graduate seats have gone up to around 1 lakh 48 thousand seats, an increase of about 80% from 82 thousand seats in 2014
- The number of AIIMS has gone up to 22 today from 7 in 2014
The Prime Minister remarked that he was always fascinated by the richness of the Tamil language and culture. “One of the happiest moments of my life was when I got a chance to speak a few words in the world’s oldest language, Tamil, at the United Nations”, he revealed. He said that his Government also had the honour of setting up ‘Subramania Bharati Chair’ on Tamil Studies at Banaras Hindu University. He said that this chair located in his Parliamentary constituency, will drive greater curiosity about Tamil.
Commenting on the emphasis on promotion of Indian languages and Indian Knowledge Systems in the National Education Policy 2020, the Prime Minister said that Tamil can now be studied as a classical language in school education at the secondary level or middle level. Tamil is one of the languages in the Bhasha-Sangam where school students get familiar with 100 sentences in various Indian languages in audio videos. Largest e-content of Tamil has been digitized under the Bharatavani project.
“We are encouraging education in mother tongue and local languages at schools. Our Government has also started making technical courses like Engineering available to students in Indian languages”, he added.
The establishment of a new campus of the CICT in Chennai is in line with the Prime Minister’s vision to protect and preserve Indian heritage and promote classical languages.
The new campus is fully funded by the Union Government and is built at a cost of Rs 24 Crore. CICT, which was operating from a rented building so far, will now operate from a new 3 storey campus. The new campus is equipped with a spacious library, an e-library, seminar halls and a multimedia hall.
The institute library has a rich collection of over 45,000 ancient Tamil books. It also aims to translate and publish ‘Thirukkural’ in various Indian as well as 100 foreign languages.
Union Ministers Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, Dr L Murugan and Dr Bharati Pawar, Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi and Chief Minister Tamil Nadu MK Stalin and his colleagues were present on the occasion.
