Mumbai: The J J Group of Hospitals, home to the Grant Medical College, has asked the Maharashtra government to allot six acres from an adjoining 12-acre parcel earlier held by Richardson & Cruddas Ltd (R&C), a Government of India undertaking. The land, located along the JJ campus in Byculla, was reclaimed by the state in 2016 and is currently under the custody of the Mumbai City District Collector. Hospital authorities have argued that the campus is bursting at the seams.
The Dean has proposed that half of the reclaimed land be handed over to create a modern research centre, a bone marrow transplant facility, and new student hostels mandated under All India Medical Council norms. The plan also includes staff quarters and a guest house to ease longstanding accommodation shortages. According to officials familiar with the matter, JJ Hospital is grappling with crippling overcrowding. Its OPDs receive between 3,000 and 3,500 visitors daily, around 225 new patients are admitted every day, and nearly 1,150 patients occupy beds at any given time.
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Administrators say the hospital’s ageing and congested infrastructure makes it increasingly difficult to manage the surging footfall and offer quality care. The request for land was recently taken up at a meeting in Mantralaya, though no final decision has been reached. The proposal faces a competing claim: R&C Ltd has urged the government to return the entire 11-acre (usable) plot to establish a “world-class exhibition centre.”
The company once operated a major heavy-engineering plant on the site, providing equipment to the power sector, steel plants, Railways, and several core industries. However, the factory’s lease expired in 1992. When the state discovered that R&C had sublet portions of the land to private commercial entities without approval, it moved to reclaim the property in 2016. Despite this, the central PSU has continued to press for restoration of the land and has approached both the Bombay High Court and the state through the Union government.
Sources told FPJ that the recent Mantralaya meeting concluded with a decision to consult both the Centre and JJ Hospital before arriving at a final allocation plan. The government is expected to weigh the hospital’s urgent expansion needs against R&C’s redevelopment proposal before taking a call on the prime Byculla land parcel.
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