In 1994, after talking to the central government, Prasanta Sur, health minister in the then Left government, announced the initial decision to build an AIIMS-style hospital in Kalyani. Pranab Mukherjee, the then chairman of the Planning Commission, also approved Rs 10 crore in the sector. On September 26 that year, the then President Shankar Dayal Sharma laid the foundation stone of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Science and Research on the land. It was then said that it would be developed as an AIIMS-style hospital.[5][6] AIIMS Kalyani was set up as part of the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) 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, 400 kilometres (250 mi) from the capital Kolkata, but by June 2014, the proposed location was changed to Kalyani, only 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the capital.
