The president of the Chandigarh Nursing Home and Hospital Association, G.S. Kochar, said the Administration's decision to allot alternate sites for nursing homes not fulfilling the conditions laid down in the notification, at a cost higher than the market rate, was questionable. These nursing home owners would be offered plots at the rate of Rs 15,000 per square yard as compared to Rs 2,000 fixed by the Punjab and Haryana urban planning and development authorities for the doctors' category, he added.

"The Administration should either give them the liberty to choose a site anywhere in the city and buy it on their own or lower the rates," he said, adding that the Nursing Home Association would take up the matter with the authorities.

Thirty-one nursing homes in residential areas are associated with the association and six would form the displaced category as and when the authorities start with the regularisation process, the notification for which was released recently.

However, the Nursing home owners' body has generally hailed the UT Administration's decision to pursue the regularisation of their establishments, running for long in residential areas. It pointed out that the annual maintenance rate (Rs 20,000 per year) being fixed for each nursing home in residential area was unjust. "We would already be paying the electricity and water bills, apart from charges for conversion of building rooms in nursing home. Why burden us with separate maintenance bill on a yearly basis?" they question.