Mumbai: The state
government will make all efforts to stop a proposal to close down
the Lilavati Hospital & Research Centre (LHRC) and make way for a
five-star hotel on the premises, Maharashtra Chief Minister
Prithviraj Chavan has said.
In a statement in the Maharashtra assembly late Thursday, Chavan
said that though the government had not received complaints about
the proposed move, the government would stall it in public
interest.
He was replying to a calling attention notice by BJP state
president and house member Devendra Phadnavis on the issue.
"There is a malafide plan to shut down Lilavati Hospital &
Research Centre), Bandra, and to construct a five-star hotel there
by those who are wrongfully and illegally calling themselves
trustees of the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta (LKM) Trust: Kishore
Mehta, his wife Charu Mehta, sons Rajiv, Rajesh and Prashant, and
others," Phadnavis said in his notice.
He said the four people were using illegally printed stationery,
diaries, letterheads, pamphlets of the LHRC and were
unauthorisedly interfering with the activities of the LKM Trust,
and these people have illegally amassed money to gain control over
the LHRC (hospital).
Chavan said in his reply that as per the Maharashtra Public Trusts
Act, it is mandatory for a trustee to take permission of the
concerned authorities for going out of India for a period which is
more than stipulated.
However, it was evident from the records of the LKM Trust that
trustee Kishor Mehta had not taken any such permission, he added.
Ranked among the leading private hospitals in Mumbai, the 314-bed
LHRC offers multi-superspeciality medical facilities to patients,
many of whom are VIPs and celebrities like Shiv Sena chief Uddhav
Thackeray and the Dalai Lama.
Since the past few years, a section of trustees have been
embroiled in different types of controversies and in-fighting.
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