Faridkot, July 30
Known for his excellence in spinal surgery in the country, Dr Raj Bahadur was first appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, on December 21, 2014.
He was given extension for the second term on December 22, 2017, and for the third time on December 22, 2020. At the time of his appointment, the university and its seven constituent medical institutions were under Rs 20 crore debt. The present total operational cost of the university and its constituent institutions is about Rs 95 crore per annum, which include Rs 65 crore salary of the employees and Rs 30 crore operational costs.
In 2018-2019, the state had announced an annual budget of Rs 124 crore for the university but only Rs 89 crore were released. In 2019-20, the budget was drastically cut from Rs 124 crore to Rs 35 crore. Now, the state has promised to enhance the budget to Rs 50 crore, but only Rs 10 crore were released so far. Despite the financial straitjacketed condition, we’re not under any debt, said a senior functionary in the university.
In the past eight years, Dr Bahadur is known for playing an important role in building the Mother and Child Hospital block, installing a CT scan machine with 128 slices, setting up a burn unit and CT simulator and increasing the MBBS (100 to 125) and MD/MS (53 to 98) seats at Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital here.
He introduced the online evaluation system of answer scripts and transmission of question papers. Born in a family of a storekeeper in Una in 1951, he did his MBBS from
HP University in 1974 and MS (Orthopaedics) from Banaras Hindu University. — TNS
VC pulled medical varsity out of Rs 20 cr debt trap
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