AIIMS Delhi Was Created by an Act of Parliament Signed on 2 June 1956, Built With a New Zealand Colombo Plan Grant, and Placed First in India's Medical Category by NIRF in 2025

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi exists because Parliament passed a law for it in 1956: the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Act, No. 25 of 1956, dated 2 June 1956. The Act declared the Institute “an institution of national importance,” gave it the power to award its own degrees, and set it three objects: to show every other medical college in India what a high standard looks like, to bring top-level training for health workers together in one place, and to make India self-sufficient in postgraduate medical education. Its own annual report for 2016-17 records 41.40 lakh (4.14 million) outpatient visits in that year, and in September 2025 the Ministry of Education’s NIRF rankings placed it first in the medical category.

What the Act actually says

The Act is short. Its text on the AIIMS website sets out that the Institute is a body corporate with perpetual succession, that it “shall be located in New Delhi,” and that it may teach undergraduates and postgraduates in modern medicine and the sciences allied to it. It may also run research, hold examinations and grant “degrees, diplomas and other academic distinctions” without going through another university.

One clause covers the first head: the first Director was to be appointed by the Central Government, and every later one by the Institute itself. Another clause says the Institute must carry out directions the Central Government issues for the efficient administration of the Act. Amrit Kaur held that the Institute became autonomous from 15 November 1956, according to the Institute’s Diamond Jubilee essay on her.

The idea came from the Bhore Committee

The Health Survey and Development Committee, chaired by Sir Joseph Bhore, reported in 1946 and recommended a national medical centre to produce highly qualified people for the country’s expanding health work. The AIIMS history page says Jawaharlal Nehru wanted such a centre to set the pace for medical education and research in South-East Asia, and that his Health Minister, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, backed the plan fully. She had joined Nehru’s first cabinet in 1947 as independent India’s first Health Minister and as its first woman member, and in 1950 became the first woman and the first Asian to preside over the World Health Assembly, according to the Constitution of India project’s profile of her.

Amrit Kaur told the Rajya Sabha on 3 May 1956 that the idea of an all-India institute of this kind was first put forward by the Bhore Committee, that she accepted it at once and pressed for it from her first year in office, and that no money came until the Colombo Plan did. The Colombo Plan was a development-aid arrangement among Commonwealth and Asian countries. Under it, New Zealand paid for the start.

A foundation stone in 1952 and a gift from New Zealand

AIIMS says the New Zealand grant made it possible to lay the foundation stone in 1952. A history page of the Delhi government’s Maulana Azad Medical College gives the day as 4 April 1952 and says the stone was laid in the compound of Irwin Hospital by a New Zealand minister. That is the only source I found for the day and the place, and the page’s rendering of the minister’s name does not look reliable, so I leave the name out. The Institute itself later rose at its present address, Ansari Nagar.

The size of the grant depends on who is counting. The AIIMS annual report for 2016-17 and the Institute’s Diamond Jubilee essay on Amrit Kaur both say 1 million pounds. In the Rajya Sabha on 3 May 1956 the Health Minister herself described “a million and a quarter pounds” from the New Zealand Government. The parliamentary record also has her saying, in her reply to the debate, that the grant carried no conditions whatsoever. Both figures are given here because the sources differ.

Four days in the Rajya Sabha

The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 21 September 1955. The Lok Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee had set aside 60 minutes for it; the House debated it from 18 to 21 February 1956 and passed it with one amendment, which made the Institute lay its annual report before both Houses. The Rajya Sabha then took it from 3 to 9 May 1956. The parliamentary records of the two debates run to more than 800 pages, according to the Institute’s Diamond Jubilee account.

Members across parties supported the bill and argued over its shape. In the Rajya Sabha, members pointed out that 25 of its 30 clauses said “prescribed by Rules,” and some asked why Ayurveda, homoeopathy and Unani were not included. Amrit Kaur answered that the Institute was for modern medicine and promised, for the future, an All India Institute for Ayurveda at Jamnagar and one for homoeopathy. On autonomy she told the House: “Trust your Government, Trust your Scientific People.” On 9 May the Rajya Sabha passed the bill. In the same reply she said: “I want this to be something wonderful, of which India can be proud, and I want India to be proud of it.”

No private practice, and a first director

The Parliament debate account describes AIIMS as the first institute of its kind in India and in Asia, with two special features: a ban on private practice in any form, and salaries high enough to make up for it. The Health Minister told the Lok Sabha the doctors would give all their time to teaching, patients and research. She also told the Rajya Sabha that the first Director would be Dr B. B. Dikshit, who had worked at the Haffkine Institute and had been Surgeon-General of Bombay. The Institute’s page on him says he was invited to be the first Director in 1956 and that he drew Indian medical scientists working abroad back to AIIMS.

The Parliament debate account spells his name Dixit; the Institute’s own biography page spells it Dikshit, and this article follows the latter.

The first years: a small budget, borrowed beds and foreign help

The Institute’s Diamond Jubilee essay on Amrit Kaur, who became its first President and chaired the Governing Body until her death in 1964, gives a picture of the early budget. Its first Governing Body meeting was held on 2 September 1957. The 1957-58 budget was Rs 40 lakh, and the whole Second Five Year Plan allocation for AIIMS was Rs 11.11 crore. The Rockefeller Foundation gave 200,000 US dollars for books, publications and equipment and sponsored air conditioning for the building. The Director General of Health Services offered 60 beds at Safdarjung Hospital for teaching medicine and surgery while the Institute’s own hospital was built from the New Zealand grant. By 1959 AIIMS had 350 beds of its own and 84 teaching beds at Safdarjung.

Admission was by open competition from the start. The entrance examination was held in 1956, 1957 and 1958 in five cities (Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Nagpur and Delhi), and the essay says 400 candidates sat it for 50 MBBS seats. The Governing Body also decided in late 1957 that the Institute would award M.Ch. and DM degrees in surgical and clinical specialities.

Queen Elizabeth II formally opened the Institute’s buildings on 27 January 1961, with President Rajendra Prasad present; the annual report for 2016-17 and ThePrint both record the date. That year the Massachusetts General Hospital, marking its 150th anniversary, listed AIIMS among the most distinguished hospitals of America, Canada and Europe and presented Amrit Kaur with a medallion, according to the Institute’s essay. Her last Governing Body meeting was on 14 August 1963, when the Governing Body accepted her gift of her house “Manorville” in Shimla as a rest house for AIIMS doctors and nurses.

What the numbers show

The 2016-17 annual report is the most detailed set of figures I could open. For 72 MBBS seats, 2,45,865 applications came in and 1,89,357 candidates sat the entrance examination on 29 May 2016. The hospital and its centres had 2,362 beds and recorded about 41.40 lakh outpatients, 2.34 lakh inpatients and over 1.7 lakh surgical procedures that year. The report’s summary table lists 2,485 publications in journals and abstracts. It also says the Institute would raise its undergraduate intake from 72 to 100 from the next session.

Later health programmes have their own tuput articles: how India eradicated polio and the Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY health cover. Another national institution of the same period is covered in the IITs from Hijli to the present network.

Counts of departments and publications differ by page. The AIIMS website says teaching and research cover 42 disciplines and over 600 publications a year; the annual report’s introduction says nearly 100 disciplines and over 2,000 publications, and its director’s review counts 7 centres and 42 stand-alone departments.

More recent figures come from the Director’s speech on the Institute’s 70th Institute Day, reported by The Tribune on 26 September 2025: over 50 lakh outpatients, more than 3.2 lakh admissions and over 3.1 lakh surgeries in a year. The Tribune does not give the year those totals cover, so treat them as the Director’s figures as reported there.

The Ministry of Education released the NIRF India Rankings 2025 on 4 September 2025, and All India Radio reported AIIMS Delhi at the top of the medical category. Medical Dialogues gives it a score of 91.80, with the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, second on 82.58. The number of years it has held the top place is counted differently in different reports, so none is given here.