The TOI report on Tuesday, "Govt sat on temple donation of dialysis machines", had highlighted that a crucial proposal had been gathering dust in the office of the minister of state for law and judiciary Ranjeet Patil, an orthopaedic surgeon by profession, since April 9, owing to red tape and procedural wrangles in the report.

A bureaucrat had told TOI that the proposal was not cleared as the temple trust had declined to clear another plan for setting up an MRI unit in a private organization. "The proposal was not acceptable since as per the legal provisions, the trust can consider proposals submitted by government and semi-government organizations but not private ones."

The bureaucrat said that on April 1, 2014, the director of health services had submitted a comprehensive proposal to the trust for providing final aid to set up dialysis units, and after scrutiny, it was approved and submitted to the law and judiciary department on April 9, 2015.

Last week, while interacting with doctors in Pune, Fadnavis had declared that his government will rope in leading temple trusts for strengthening health care across the state.

A former dean expressed concern over the deterioration of state-run medical colleges. "In the last two decades, we have neither been able to set up a new department in any of the 14 state-run medical colleges nor has there been adequate research on new trends in the medical field."

...