High Court moved against 108 contract to GVK

HYDERABAD: Terming the memorandum of understanding signed by the state government entrusting the ‘108’ EMRI (Emergency Management and Research Institute) services to the GVK group as illegal, a public interest litigation petition has been filed in the High Court, urging it to set aside the MoU dated September 19, 2011. It further wanted the court to direct the government to adopt a fair and transparent method to award the contract by inviting public tenders. The PIL will come up for hearing before a division bench comprising chief justice Madan B Lokur and justice PV Sanjay Kumar on Monday. Petitioner PR Subrahmanyam, managing trustee of Cherish Foundation (a charitable trust), requested the court to direct the special chief secretary (health, medical & family welfare) and commissioner of health to provide uninterrupted ‘108’ emergency services to people. He wanted the court to suspend the operation of the GVK-EMRI MoU and to direct the government to operate the service itself pending disposal of the petition.The petitioner said the government had shown undue favour to the GVK group by agreeing to pay it Rs 5 crore per annum in the name of rental charges. Instead of going in for a one-time investment of about Rs 1.5 crore, the government is paying about Rs 42 lakh a month as rent for a call centre run by GVK-EMRI. The GVK group has diverted Rs 11.78 crore public money released by the government to clear its bank loans. In fact, the MoU is against the standard ‘Request for Proposal (RFP)’ documents and principles of public private management but the government agreed to pay 100%  share without any financial or physical control over the operations. As per the MoU, 752 ambulances shall be in operation everyday and each ambulance shall attend to 4 emergencies a day. But several ambulances are off the road for want of diesel and repairs.