Commonwealth Games: Little-known cos given big overlay deals

The controversial and lucrative overlay contracts for the Commonwealth Games were won by obscure Indian entities with little experience handling such large projects.

The overlay deals for temporary infrastructure, totalling more than Rs 600 crore, were awarded to four contractors, three of whom had Indian partners. The fourth, Nussli India, is a unit of a Swiss company.

Among the Indian companies sharing the overlay pie is D Art Furniture Systems, which, in partnership with the UK’s ESG Arena, won deals worth Rs 93 crore. Its website describes D Art as a supplier of furniture but Praveen Bakshi, a director, said the company is now an interior-decorating outfit. Its role in the overlay contract, he said, is to arrange local logistics and Customs clearances.

Mr Bakshi is listed as a director along with Sanjay Malhotra and Taruna Bakshi in documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). He claimed a turnover of Rs 13-15 crore for D Art in the last financial year.

The organising panel, whose chairman is Congress politician Suresh Kalmadi, has hired overlay items such as treadmills, chairs, refrigerators and umbrellas at abnormally high rates, raising suspicions of corruption in the deals with the Delhi 2010 Games just two months away.

On Wednesday, the panel said it will be buying treadmills, not renting them. Secretary general of the panel, Lalit Bhanot, said at a press conference that the bidding process for procuring equipment was carried out in a transparent manner.

On Monday, this paper first reported that the exercise machine was being hired for Rs 9.75 lakh for just 45 days while a top-end treadmill could be bought for Rs 7 lakh, causing indignation.

An Indian company that is part of the consortium that won the biggest overlay contract is Deepali Design and Exhibits, founded by Vinay Mittal, the nephew of BJP’s ‘tentwallah’ Sudhanshu Mittal. It partnered with Hong Kong’s Pico Global Services for contracts worth Rs 231 crore.

AK Saxena, joint director general for overlay at the organising panel, said the net worth and experience criteria for qualification to bid applied only to Indian companies. “There was a clause that all the foreign firms would have to take on Indian partners,” he added.

Mr Saxena defended some of the freakishly expensive deals saying the items were for the use of professional athletes and could not be compared to household products.