Chennai: Against the backdrop of a surge in Covid-19 cases in the country, Prime Minister Narendera Modi has cancelled his scheduled visit to Tamilnadu today.

However, he is inaugurating 11 new government medical colleges across the State and the new campus of the Central Institute of Classical Tamil at Perumbakkam in Chennai via videoconferencing today.

Chief Minister M K Stalin will attend the event virtually from the Secretariat.  The new colleges have been established in Virudhunagar, Namakkal, the Nilgiris, Tirupur, Tiruvallur, Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Kallakurichi, Ariyalur, Ramanathapuram and Krishnagiri at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore.

According to a PMO statement, ‘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 new medical colleges have a total capacity of 1,450 seats and are established under the Centre’s ‘Establishing of New Medical Colleges attached with existing district/referral hospital’ scheme, it added.

Meanwhile, the CICT campus is fully funded by the Union government. Built at Rs 24 crore, the campus has an e-library, seminar halls and a multimedia hall. The institute has been running in a rented building in Taramani.

The release added: ‘An autonomous organisation under the Union Ministry of Education, CICT is contributing to the promotion of classical Tamil by doing research activities to establish the ancientness and uniqueness of Tamil language.’

‘The institute library has a collection of over 45,000 ancient Tamil books and has an aim to translate and publish Tamil classic Thirukkural in various Indian languages and 100 foreign languages.’