MADURAI: The ministry of health and family welfare is understood to have chosen Thoppur in Madurai as the location for the proposed All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS ). This was communicated to state revenue minister R B Udayakumar by the chairman of Pradhan Mantri Swathya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY), Sanjay Roy, here on Tuesday.According to the communique, Thoppur has bagged the highest marks among the five places in Tamil Nadu shortlisted for setting up the prestigious institute. The decision is also subject to the realisation of five conditions including four-lane connectivity from the national highway, 20MVA power supply from two different feeders, adequate water supply, handover of land and shifting of transformer. The fifth condition is execution of an agreement with Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, apparently on a pipeline passing through the site.An elated Udayakumar told TOI, ``I said I will resign if Madurai was not selected for the establishment of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, to attract the attention of the central government to the importance of establishing it here, and that has yielded results,” he said. The minister added that before he said so, the Centre had only considered Madurai as one of the five places in contention. “When a minister threatens to resign, it gains importance,” he said.The decision is expected to boost Madurai’s economy as it would enhance job opportunities and help the hotel industry grow along with other sectors. Though the ministers “are not biased towards any particular spot,” Udayakumar said that Madurai did not have much to fall back on except its reputation of being a temple city unlike Chennai and Coimbatore which were economically well off and Thanjavur which was agriculturally developed.AIIMS would uplift Madurai economically as transport connectivity would also go up. Most significantly, it would benefit people from over 15 districts in terms of medical facilities and also bring many jobs to the region, he added.

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