Indian govt pours money for Commonwealth Games

The Indian government on Friday approved an additional 152 million dollars for this year’s Commonwealth Games in a desperate effort to ensure the venues are finished in time.

The organisers of the October 3-14 Games in New Delhi will get the money for temporary fittings, fixtures and equipment required to make the venues operationally ready, a government statement said.

“The installation of these high end items of overlays (temporary fittings, fixtures and equipment) will set high standards for technological excellence and capacity enhancement,” the statement added.

“The installation of overlays is scheduled to commence from June. The overlays will be removed from the venues immediately after the Games.”

The 12-day sporting extravaganza is already the most expensive Commonwealth Games in history with an infrastructure and organising budget of two billion dollars.

The previous edition in Melbourne, Australia in 2006 cost 1.1 billion dollars.

Preparations for the Games, the biggest multi-sport event to be staged in India since the Asian Games in 1982, have been dogged by slow progress in the construction of stadiums and other infrastructure.

Nervousness around the Games is growing as deadlines slip repeatedly, particularly for the main Jawaharlal Nehru stadium and the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee swimming complex.

“The deadlines are being pushed further every time,” Mike Hooper, chief executive of the London-based Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), which owns and controls the Games, told AFP recently.

“In October last year we were told most of the venues will be ready by December, except the Jawaharlal Nehru and swimming stadiums which they said would be ready by March. Now that deadline has shifted to June.

“We struggle to understand that. If the venue construction programme does not adhere to what are self-imposed deadlines now, it will impact adversely the operational obligations.”