The Odisha government on Wednesday ordered a probe into the alleged involvement of a Pakistani national in the running of a corporate hospital here.
The state governments action came after the issue was raised in the Assembly during the day.
Opposition BJP and Congress had alleged in the House that a city-based private hospital has handed over its operation to a Pakistani national who was held on charge of running an illegal kidney transplant racket.
The hospital authority has strongly denied the charge.
I have already ordered a probe into the allegations made against the hospital. Officials also raided the hospital today and action will be taken as per the law if found guilty, Odishas Health and Family Welfare Minister Nabakishore Das told reporters.
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Raising the issue during the zero hour on Wednesday, the Leader of Opposition Pradipta Kumar Naik of BJP asked how could the state government allow the private hospital to hand over the medical facility here to a Pakistani agent who was held for operating a kidney transplant racket.
Naik said the state government has provided land free of cost to the hospital. Therefore how can the hospital authorities decide to sell it off to a Pakistani businessman?" he asked.
Making similar allegations, the BJP deputy leader in the Assembly, B C Sethi said the private hospital was not treating below poverty line patients at concessional rates, which is the norm for medical facilities built on government land.
He also sought to know how the hospital authorities involved a Pakistani national to operate the medical facility from Dubai.
Senior Congress member Taraprasad Bahinipati demanded immediate action against the private hospital, which, he alleged, used to exploit patients from the state.
"The hospital has been handed over to the Pakistani national without obtaining no-objection certificate from the state government," Bahinipati said.
Both the BJP and Congress members urged the Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro to give a ruling and direct the health minister to furnish a reply in the House.
Ruling BJD MLA Amar Prasad Satpathy said, "As per allegations the hospital has not taken any NOC from the government for land transfers. We are expecting that the government will soon launch an investigation."
The corporate hospital authority has denied the allegations and claimed that "some people" are "trying to malign it by spreading lies" that it is involved in illegal kidney transplantation.
The allegation of involvement of the Pakistani national is "utterly baseless, false and fictitious", it said.
There is no involvement of any Pakistani person in our hospital. We are part of a much larger network of the Evercare Group, which is a healthcare family that extends over Asia and Africa with a clinical network of 30 hospitals, 75 clinics and 40 diagnostic centres and over 350 beds, Gurrit Kaur Sethi, the chief operating officer of Care Hospital, Odisha, told PTI.
The Evercare Group is wholly owned by the Evercare Health Fund, a USD one billion dollar emerging markets healthcare fund managed by the Rice Fund, she said.
Kaur Sethi said, "Care Hospitals, Bhubaneswar, is in the process of obtaining the kidney transplantation license and till date not a single transplant has been performed in this hospital."
She also rejected allegations that the Care Hospital was given land free of cost by the state government. We have purchased the land at a cost of over Rs 2 crore and are sincerely serving the people of Odisha".
A press statement issued by the hospital said that it has already issued legal notices to two local newspapers of Bhubaneswar for publishing "wrong, misleading and fabricated" news without authenticating its veracity.
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