Hyderabad?s Cheralapally jail, in association with the Andhra Pradesh government and Bangalore-based Radiant Infosystems, on Monday launched a BPO targeting e-governance projects. .

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will be a partner in this project and supply the hardware. The jail?s 2,000 inmates include Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju, who is currently out on bail.

The target projects include UID, National Population Registry and IT initiatives in rural development programmes requiring data entry works for back office operations.

Speaking to FE, Radiant Infosystems? director C Narayanacharyulu said, ?The BPO is a not-for-profit initiative and is aimed at improving the lives of the prisoners. The $40-million Radiant is in talks with some leading customers to extend this CSR activity.?

?The jail inmates get a mere Rs 15 per day, we hope to better it to at least Rs 100 per day. Essentially, these are low-end data entry works and we are talking to central and state governments for extending these projects to jail inmates,?? he said. ?We have got confirmation from two Indian companies who have agreed to partner as customers in this project,? Narayanacharyulu added. The pilot involves training about 300 people, but the initial target is 50 people across three shifts.

?We have spoken to multiple customers who are yet to respond as we have plans to increase the daily wages to at least Rs 150 per day,? he said.

The people will be identified by the prisons department of Andhra Pradesh and selected by the jail authorities based on criteria including behaviour and attitude.

A 15-day training programme has been started for the jail trainers, which will be followed by 60-day programme for the inmates. Depending on the success of the pilot in Hyderabad, Radiant?s second project would be at the Vizag prison which has over 1,000 inmates. When asked if Ramalinga Raju would become the CEO of jail BPO, he said his expertise would be utilised provided he comes back to jail. Raju is said to have become a source of inspiration for many jail inmates at Cherlapally.