New Delhi:
Suresh Kalmadi wrested control of the Commonwealth Games from the government, which agreed to pay the bills without questioning its demotion to an impotent observer of the broad-based corruption that added upto thousands of crores, paid for by taxpayers. The inquest of the Games - as provided in an expansive report of the government's auditor - was tabled in Parliament today. With its sharp indictment of the Prime Minister's Office and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, the report is payday for the Opposition.
On cue, the BJP has demanded that Mrs Dikshit resign because of the charges against her in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Mrs Dikshit, the report finds, cost the government hundreds of crores through mismanagement. The Chief Minister said this evening that she has not yet received a copy of the auditor's report, which will be presented to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament. "We can assure when the report goes to PAC, whatever departments are asked to answer queries of the PAC, we will cooperate with them completely and fully," Mrs Dikshit said.
Contracts were awarded with favouritism and bias for different aspects of the Games, the report finds. There were "constant deviations from the original scope of work which led to delays and increased costs and extra payments." In many cases when there are clear delays in achieving the milestones laid out in contracts, penalties have still not been collected, the auditor concludes.
The auditor compliments the Chief Minister on the improved appearances of Delhi's roads, but says they came at an unjustifiable prices - more than 100 crores were wasted, it states. "The street-scaping and beautification project was ill-conceived without a broad over-arching vision and perspective of how this would impact urban design," the report declares, adding that consultants were hired in an "arbitrary and non-transparent fashion" without any estimates or budgets.
Mrs Dikshit is also questioned about her decision to allow imported street lights for some roads. This led to a waste of 30 crores, according to the auditor, largely because the rates of the imported lights were "much higher than the fair price." The Cabinet Secretary of the Delhi government, PK Tripathi, has denied these charges earlier this week.
The auditor says that it checked out at least seven roads and flyovers completed before the Games. "There were irregularities in how the projects were awarded." How crass the manipulations were is reflected in this finding - "correction fluid was used in some tenders."
But it is for Mr Kalmadi that the auditor reserves its harshest judgements for Mr Kalmadi and the government's permissiveness of his proclivity to employ the Games to bankroll people or companies that his associates and he preferred. Virtually every contract for equipment, sponsorship, broadcast rights, catering was over-inflated; in most cases the correct procedures for awarding contracts were ignored.
Mr Kalmadi has been in jail since April for corruption related to the Games. "Payments were made in haste, with high amounts being given in cash," the auditor says of the Organising Committee he headed. The committee's "state of documentation was so inadequate that we are unable to get an assurance about the authenticity of records," the auditor said. "Processing of sensitive contracts was allocated in arbitrary manner to officials who had no linkages to the concerned functional area." There are also examples of "award of contracts to ineligible vendors, inadequate time for bids, inexplicable delays in contract finalisation which compromised transparency and economy." You get the drift.
If Mr Kalmadi's alleged machinations were conceived with a better sophistication, perhaps India might feel less cheated. But his M.O. was both banal and transparent. The auditor seems to suggest what the BJP has claimed all along - that the UPA government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh had some warning that Mr Kalmadi should not have chaired the Organising Committee; but it chose to let him have his way.
The Prime Minister's Office said last week that the bid and contract for the Games, as settled by the government that preceded it, had placed Mr Kalmadi irreversibly in charge.
In May 2003, when India bid for the Games, Atal Behari Vajpayee's government was in power. The bid documents said that a government nominee would head the Committee, which was envisaged as a government-owned registered society. The Vice-Chairman would be the head of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), a position then occupied by Mr Kalmadi. In November that year, the parent-body of the Games, the CGF, accepted India's bid. Inexplicably, an "updated bid" was presented to the CGF in December which according to the audit "has no legal sanctity or relevance."
This bid was submitted by Mr Kalmadi to the Sports Minister in 2004. The new language meant that the Committee was set up as a non-government society that would be headed by Mr Kalmadi, not a government nominee. Mr Kalmadi then wrote to the Prime Minister, stating that he should be made Chairperson of the Organising Committee, while the Minister of Sports would be chairperson of a Steering Committee of Ministers who would oversee the Games.
At the time, actor-politician Sunil Dutt was Sports Minister. He wrote to the PM objecting to the new bid and its provisions. But in December 2004, Mr Kalmadi's chairmanship was endorsed by the Prime Minister's Office. Two months later, in February 2005, the Organising Committee was registered as a non-government society. Its charter declared Mr Kalmadi as Chairman by name, and not by virtue of his designation as President of the IOA.
The Organising Committee had a 15-member board, with only two nominees each of the central government and Delhi government. Mr Kalmadi had severely reduced the role and control of the government; but its financial commitments were left unaffected. The auditor finds the government functioned like a male driver without a map, refusing to ask for directions. "A multiplicity of coordination committees were created, disbanded and reconstituted, leading to complete diffusion of accountability."