Expanded surgical capacity
According to the minister's office and press reports, the inauguration covered eight new modular operating rooms, bringing the total in the institute's operating theater complex to 20. Singh, minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office, told reporters that access to advanced surgery at AIIMS Jammu would reduce patients' need to seek specialized treatment in other states.
The institute's president, Lt. Gen. (Dr.) C S Narayanan, and Executive Director and CEO Prof. (Dr.) Sanjeev Sinha described the complex as an expansion of its capacity to treat patients from Jammu and Kashmir and neighboring regions.
Singh praised the institute's progress in infrastructure, faculty strength and medical services. He said it had added specialties and expanded care over the past eight to ten years at a pace unusual for medical colleges.
More services, but gaps in teaching staff
Most super-specialty departments were now operating, Singh said, and the institute had started postgraduate and post-doctoral courses including MD, MS, DM and MCh. A March 17, 2026, Rajya Sabha reply reported that 42 departments offering broad-specialty and super-specialty services were functional at AIIMS Jammu.
That expansion has faced staffing constraints. Singh acknowledged that a lack of faculty in some specialties was limiting resident places in certain departments and, at times, holding back the expansion of courses. He said he had discussed the staffing issues separately with Sinha and that they were also being pursued in Delhi.
Parliamentary replies earlier in the year documented the vacancies. The March 17 Rajya Sabha reply listed 119 faculty members in post out of 183 sanctioned positions, leaving 64 vacancies. A Lok Sabha reply reported on July 25 put the number of filled faculty positions at 114, with 69 vacant.
The July reply also reported 326 non-faculty vacancies: 985 of the institute's 1,311 sanctioned positions were occupied.
A regional referral role and a second AIIMS
"I believe this institution will develop into a state-of-the-art healthcare centre with integrated facilities, particularly as it also offers AYUSH services," Singh said. He envisioned AIIMS Jammu becoming a referral hospital for both the Jammu region and nearby states, including Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.
Singh said Jammu and Kashmir was perhaps the country's only Union Territory with two AIIMS institutions, at Vijaypur in Jammu's Samba and at Awantipora in Kashmir. He attributed the decision to establish an AIIMS in Jammu to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal intervention, saying Modi had insisted that sanctioning an institution for Srinagar should be accompanied by one for Jammu.
The two institutions had different sanctioned staffing levels in the March 17 Rajya Sabha reply: 183 faculty and 1,311 non-faculty positions at AIIMS Jammu, compared with 94 faculty and 252 non-faculty positions at AIIMS Awantipora.
Awantipora remained under construction. The same reply put physical construction progress at 74% and set December 2026 as the scheduled completion date for civil works.
Research and preventive healthcare
At the event, Singh also pointed to vaccine and genomics work as examples of India's research capabilities. He cited the world's first DNA vaccine for COVID-19, a vaccine pipeline covering HPV, dengue, malaria and tuberculosis, the India Genome Project, and a national effort to sequence one million genomes. He linked preventive healthcare to the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal.
