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Iconic eye hospital’s lease ‘not renewed’ since 1971; notice served
Over 50-year-old BS Mehta Eye Hospital in Prayagraj, India, has been served a notice after it was found that the facility was running on expired land lease. The hospital has been asked to submit documents within three days showing the extension of the lease or conversion of the land to freehold. The hospital may face heavy fines or legal action if it fails to comply. The hospital management said it is in the process of collating old land records and plans to resume surgeries on 27 November after a seven-year gap.
Over half-a-century-old BS Mehta Eye Hospital in the city has been served a notice after it was found that the facility was running on a land parcel whose lease expired 52 years ago in 1971.
Confirming the development, official sources said the iconic hospital, located in Civil Lines, was asked by Prayagraj Municipal Corporation to submit documents showing the extension of the lease period or the conversion of the land to freehold. In the notice, served on Monday, the hospital was asked to furnish the said documents within three days.
The corporation may even take a legal recourse, and levy heavy fines, if it doesn’t find the hospital management’s response satisfactory. “Heavy fines can also be imposed on the hospital built on a Nazul plot whose lease expired 52 years ago in 1971,” officials said.
What came as a surprise was that it took five decades for the corporation to take notice of the expiry of the lease period. Additional municipal commissioner Deependra Yadav recently noticed the violation and brought it to the notice of officials concerned.
Yadav said a notice was pasted on the gates of the hospital, and appropriate action would be taken as per the rules.
Responding to the development, the hospital said it was in the process of collating old land records. It added it was getting new machines installed and would resume performing surgeries on November 27 after a gap of seven years.
It may be noted that for many years, and up until recently, the hospital was being managed by the District Eye Relief Society, which is headed by Prayagraj divisional commissioner as its ex-officio president and district magistrate and chief medical officer as its ex-officio vice-presidents.
Just on July 7 this year, the management of the hospital was handed back to the Sitapur Eye Hospital Trust, which owns it.
BS Mehta Eye Hospital—once a pride of southeastern U.P— was founded by Padma Bhushan Dr MP Mehray (also the founder of the Sitapur Eye Hospital), who deputed Dr JC Bass to look after a very small hospital in an old building abandoned by an Khuldabad infectious diseases hospital.
The main function of the unit was to investigate and treat outpatients suffering from dropsy glaucoma, which had become an epidemic causing many to go blind in then Allahabad once. Later, the Mahant of Niranjani Akhara donated seven beds and some bricks to the hospital for the construction of a wall around a tin shed to provide shelter to indoor patients.
In 1956, a new building, in addition to a three-acre land on Clive Road, which is in the heart of Civil Lines, was acquired for ₹80,000 for the hospital. A major fund for the purchase was contributed by GL Mehta, a prominent businessman from Kolkata, who was moved after seeing the apathy of the old hospital building.
Op theatre inaugurated by PM Shastri in 1964
Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, the then Union Health Minister, laid the foundation stone of a 54-bed general ward in 1957. Then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri inaugurated an operation theatre in the hospital in 1964.
To this day, the hospital has been a popular choice for many owing to its low outpatient charges. The hospital, which has three doctors, also runs a satellite clinic in Phulpur and a once-a-week clinic at Sirsa, Jasra and Soraon.
