Sir Sunderlal Hospital is a premium healthcare centre of Banaras, situated inside the campus of Banaras Hindu University. Patients from Bihar, U.P, Jharkhand, M.P comes here from treatment. Basically it is a centre for poor patients as the treatment facilities are cheaper.
The CT-scan centre in this hospital was also a part of its cheap healthcare facility. It is a joint venture of B.H.U and a private company.When this CT-scan facility was established, it was being run on a 70-30 partnership. 30% to the B.H.U administration. Slowly they cut the rate to 90-10 even when the company was not in loss, leading to high charges for scan which became unaffordable for the poor. From the past 7 or 8 years the situation is the same. The same machine of CT-scan centre in the trauma centre B.H.U (another hospital of B.H.U) provides far more better facilities cost one-third of the amount, and also gives the fare share of BHU administration. The owner of that facility is Mr. Manoj Shah who is a close associate of the incumbent BJP MLA Jyotsna Srivastava who represents Varanasi Cantt constituency.
This scam was revealed to the students through Right To Information querries and the CAG audit. They tried to file a case against it. But no further steps were taken initially. And the son of that MLA Saurabh Srivastav threatened one pf the student that he will kidnap him and beat him to death. Against this, people protested peacefully at the city centre B.H.U. We closed the gate of that corrupt city centre. The protest went on for three days. In between there were constant pressure from the state police and BHU administration that we should step back. They did not keep an eye on the corruption issue, of course. On the third day of protest within two hours the university administration formed a committee and jailed 20 students out of which 6 have been rusticated.
Now because the Vice Chancellor gets a fare share of that theft from the CT-centre that’s why he is not taking this issue raised by students seriously. He is himself an RSS member and the MLA who is benefiting from it is a B.J.P leader.
This is an outrageous story of corrupt people who are cheating the student and the poor seeking better health facilities. And they are imposing their fascist ideology on students.We condemn this fascism. And we hope that u will use the new media to bring this issue on a larger canvas
(The author is a BA Second Year Student in BHU, Varanasi)
