Public money being looted in the name of Games

‘Tendering procedures have been bypassed and contracts are being given to favourite firms’

‘I have been expelled from the Organising Committee for raising issues of accountability’

Reacting strongly to his expulsion from the Commonwealth Games-2010 Organising Committee, former Union Minister of State for Sports Vijay Goel on Tuesday charged that there was “widespread corruption going on in the name of the Commonwealth Games-2010 both at the level of the Organising Committee as well as the Delhi Government”.

Addressing a press conference, Mr. Goel, who was the Sports Minister at the Centre in late 2003 when Delhi won the bid for hosting the Games in 2010, said the Organising Committee headed by Congress leader Suresh Kalmadi and the Delhi Government both had delayed the preparations for the Games leading to a huge escalation in costs.
Sub-tendering

The BJP national general secretary, who claimed that he had been expelled from the Organising Committee at its annual general meeting on Monday for raising issues of accountability, said that in the name of the Games the normal tendering procedures of the Government had been bypassed and contracts were being given to favourite companies. Mr. Goel said there were also reports of sub-tendering of work orders. Besides, he said, when a big contractor left the project, the same work was got done through another at a much higher cost.
‘Poor quality’ buses

The Delhi Government too, he charged, had been using the Games as a front to purchase “poor quality” low-floor buses and had been sugar-coating all its infrastructure projects like flyovers, hospitals, hotels or works like street-lighting or beautification of roads by affixing the name of the Commonwealth Games to them to avoid questioning on quality or costing.
Lingering projects

“What is even more shocking,” he said, “is that many of the projects are still lingering in the initial stages and soon we may find more costs being added to them….Every other day we see Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit asking and getting special funds from the Central Government in the name of Commonwealth Games-2010. And while Government funds are flowing on one side, on the other higher taxes, tariffs and fares are being charged from the people in the name of cost of development.”