Raju's EMRI charity, an eye-wash

Hyderabad, Jan 14: After the Satyam Fiasco, Ramalinga Raju will be afflicted with one more scam. The Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) scam. This is the 108 free ambulance services in collaboration with Satyam Computers is a public-private partnership in Hyderabad. The Institute provides comprehensive emergency management services for Medical, Police and Fire in the Indian States of Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Assam.

Though this is a public-private partnership, 95 per cent of the funding is done by the State Government (Rs 100 crore per year), with EMRI bearing just five per cent of the operation cost.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) based on the right to Information is filed in the Supreme Court. The PIL alleges that this is a Rs 5,400-crore scam and Raju got the Andhra Pradesh government to pay for most of the operational costs of the ambulance service.

The Andhra government first sanctioned Rs 14,000 monthly for each ambulance and the amount was gradually increased to Rs 65,000 and then to Rs 1.2 lakh.

Raju next convinced 12 other state governments to similarly support the EMRI"s ambulance services in their states, the PIL alleges.

Out of the twelve states, eight states did not float tenders, instead they tailored the tenders to favour EMRI, the PIL alleges. The Supreme Court issued notices to the state governments and EMRI in November 2008.

EMRI on Tuesday, Jan 13 announced it would make public all its financial details. The group had big names on its board: former president A P J Abdul Kalam, former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik, ICICI Bank"s K V Kamath, CII chief mentor Tarun Das and Krishna Palepu of the Harvard Business School.

OneIndia News (With inputs from Agencies)