Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate 11 new government medical colleges across Tamil Nadu and the new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil in Chennai on Wednesday via video conferencing, his office said.

The new medical colleges are being established at an estimated cost of about Rs 4,000 crore, of which around Rs 2,145 crore has been provided by the Union government and the rest by the Tamil Nadu government, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Prime Minister Modi will inaugurate 11 new government medical colleges across Tamil Nadu and the new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil in Chennai at 4 PM on January 12 via video conferencing, it said.

The districts where the new medical colleges are being established are Virudhunagar, Namakkal, Nilgiris, Tiruppur, Thiruvallur, Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Kallakurichi, Ariyalur, Ramanathapuram and Krishnagiri.

Establishment of these medical colleges is in line with the prime minister’s constant endeavour to promote affordable medical education and improve health infrastructure in all parts of the country, the PMO said.

The new medical colleges, with a cumulative capacity of 1,450 seats, are being established under the centrally-sponsored scheme of ‘Establishing of New Medical Colleges attached with existing district/referral hospital’.

Under the scheme, medical colleges are established in districts, which do not have either a government or private medical college, the statement said.

The establishment of a new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) in Chennai is in line with the prime minister’s vision to protect and preserve Indian heritage and promote classical languages, the PMO said.

The new campus is fully funded by the Union government and is built at a cost of Rs 24 crore, it said.

CICT, which was operating from a rented building so far, will now function from a new three-storey campus.

The new campus is equipped with a spacious library, an e-library, seminar halls and a multimedia hall, the statement said.

An autonomous organisation under the Union Ministry of Education, CICT is contributing to the promotion of classical Tamil by doing research activities so as to establish the ancientness and uniqueness of Tamil language, it said.

The institute library has a rich collection of over 45,000 ancient Tamil books.

To promote classical Tamil and support its students, the institute indulges in academic activities like holding seminars and training programmes, granting fellowship, etc., the statement said.

It also aims to translate and publish ‘Thirukkural’ in various Indian as well as 100 foreign languages.

The new campus will provide an efficient working environment for the institute in its pursuit of promoting classical Tamil across the world, the statement said.

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