IIT Kharagpur has decided to keep on hold its decision to shift staff and infrastructure from Bidhan Chandra Roy Technology Hospital on the campus to the new Syama Prasad Mookerjee Superspeciality Hospital 4km away after the announcement drew fire from teachers.

A meeting of the institute’s Hospital Management Committee on Monday decided to keep the move in abeyance. Among those at the meeting were representatives of teachers, officers and students.

An order issued by the IIT registrar on Monday said: “The matter referred to the office order dated 12.12.2024 shall be taken up in the upcoming BoG (board of governors) meeting to be held on 20.12.2024. The chairman, BoG, will also discuss the matter during his meeting with IIT Kharagpur Teachers Association. In light of the above, the director has been pleased to hold the implementation of the Office Order regarding relocation of staff and infrastructure facilities of BCRTH to SPMSP for the time being.”

Calls, texts and emails from this newspaper to director V.K. Tewari went unanswered.

A December 12 order had said all IPD (in-patient department) and OPD (outpatient department) services, “except a skeleton facility”, along with OT services, including the autoclave machine and operating table, the entire pathology, biochemistry and microbiology set-ups... would be shifted to the new facility by December 23.

The Telegraph reported on December 15 about the opposition on the campus to an alleged attempt to undermine the hospital named after former chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy, among the founders of the country’s first IIT.

The new hospital is named after Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Jana Sangh, the precursor to the BJP.

The IIT Kharagpur Teachers Association disapproved of the move and wrote to the chairman of the institute’s board of governors on December 13 that the Hospital Management Committee, reconstituted by the director in September 2020, was not even consulted about the shift. The letter sought the chairman’s intervention.

“As this shift is going to be a major disruption for the campus community including the students, we are appalled that none of the recognised bodies representing Teachers, Staff, Officers or Students have ever been consulted, although there exists a committee called ‘Hospital Management Committee’ that includes representation of all these stakeholders,” the letter said.

“...It needs a thorough discussion and maybe, it would be prudent to take advice from a larger cross-section of the campus community and the students as well as the retired pensioners living outside the periphery of the campus.”

An IIT professor said the director was forced to call the Hospital Management Committee’s meeting, where all members opposed the move.

“The director was told that the facilities at Syama Prasad Mookerjee hospital should be strengthened, but not at the cost of BC Roy Technology Hospital. The IIT authorities could not jeopardise the healthcare of at least 17,000 students and 10,000 other campus residents who depend on the campus hospital,” said a teacher.

Roy gave the land to set up the IIT and the hospital came up a few years after the institute came into being in 1951.

Before the start of the meeting, the wives of the many teachers went to the director’s office and told him about their opposition to the planned shift.

“We are opposed to sacrificing BC Roy hospital... We want the facilities at the hospital in Balarampur to be strengthened so we don’t have to travel to Calcutta for better treatment. But BC Roy hospital cannot be weakened for this,” said Baisakhee Saha, the wife of a teacher.