AIIMS Kalyani was set up as part of the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana initiative, announced by the Government of India in 2003 and officially launched in March 2006, for the purpose of "correcting regional imbalances in the availability of affordable/reliable tertiary healthcare services", through setting up AIIMS Delhi-like institutions and upgrading government medical colleges. Establishing an AIIMS in West Bengal was proposed in 2012 as part of the 12th Five-Year Plan, with the original location proposed being Raiganj, from the capital Kolkata, but by June 2014, the proposed location was changed to Kalyani, only from the capital. The AIIMS was officially announced in July 2014, in the budget speech for 2014–15, where the Minister of FinanceArun Jaitley announced a budget of for setting up the four "Phase-IV" AIIMSs, in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and the Purvanchal region in Uttar Pradesh. In March 2015, the union cabinet gave an official approval for the location, on a 150-acre lot in the village Basantapur, Saguna, near Kalyani. A budget of was approved in October 2015 and the 179.82-acre lot of land was handed over from the West Bengal government to the central government in December of that year. The construction of the institute started in 2016, with a target completion date of March 2020. The institute became operational with the first batch of 50 MBBS students, which started in September 2019, one of the six AIIMSs to become operational in 2019. The mentoring institution is AIIMS Bhubaneswar, the first Director appointed was Dipika Deka and Chitra Sarkar selected as president. Deka resigned in May 2019, leaving the director's position open, In March 2020, Ramji Singh was appointed as new director.
Campuses
The permanent campus of AIIMS Kalyani is under construction, with an expected completion date in October 2020. Temporarily, classes of the first batch were taken at the College of Medicine & JNM Hospital campus in Kalyani, while students are already staying at the hostel on campus. Dr. Ritesh Singh is the Hostel Superintendent. An outpatient department at the permanent campus is expected to start in February 2020.
