New Delhi:
Just how Suresh Kalmadi became the man in charge of organising the Commonwealth Games in India has become India's latest whodunit.
The Prime Minister's Office blames Atal Behari Vajpayee's government which was in power when India bid for the Games in 2003 - a claim repeated in the Lok Sabha today by Sports Minister Ajay Maken. The BJP says that's not the case.
As Chairman of the Organising Committee (OC) of the Commonwealth Games, Mr Kalmadi led a team of men whose biggest trademark became bare-faced corruption. He was arrested in April. So whoever picked him chose unwisely.
Whose Kalmadi Is He Anyway hurtled into mega-controversy last night, when NDTV found that a report by the government's auditor blames the Prime Minister's Office for Mr Kalmadi's elevation to head of the committee that stole crores from the country. "In our opinion, the decision of the PMO for appointing Suresh Kalmadi as Chairman of the OC facilitated the conversion of the originally envisaged government-owned OC into a body effectively outside the government control," writes the Comptroller and Auditor General. The report will be presented soon in Parliament.
In the Lok Sabha, Mr Maken presented the government's view of what transpired - that when Dr Manmohan Singh's government was voted into power in 2004, the paperwork that had been signed by the Vajpayee government for the Games ensured that Mr Kalmadi would rule the Commonwealth roost.
In May 2003, India bid for the Games. At that time, an org chart sent by the Vajpayee government said that the head of the Organising Committee would be a government nominee. The vice-chairman of the committee would be the head of the Indian Olympic Association, a post Mr Kalmadi occupied. In November 2003, the government signed a contract with the parent-body of the Commonwealth Games, the CGF.
It's via this contract, Mr Maken claims, that the Vajpayee government arranged for Mr Kalmadi to chair the committee. The agreement stated that the organisation of the Games would be entrusted to the Commonwealth Games Association of the host country, in this case the Indian Olympic Association. Mr Maken says that the second mistake made was that the contract was signed by the union government, instead of the Delhi government. Mr Maken says, "The Host City Contract effectively became the 'Host Country Contract'. In the process, while it committed the Central Government to all financial and infrastructural obligations ...it, in one stroke also took away from the Government of India, any residual, amending or discretionary powers, that could have been exercised ... to salvage any wrong doings."
On November 1, 2004, the General Assembly of the Indian Olympic Association elected Mr Kalmadi the Chair of the Organising Committee. Mr Maken said that many opposition parties were represented at the General Assembly, and therefore participated in Mr Kalmadi's appointment. Case closed, as far as Dr Manmohan Singh's government is concerned.
But the BJP tells a remarkably different story. Vikram Verma, who was the Sports Minister in 2003 when India bid for and won the rights to host the Games, says that the contract always stated that the Organising Committee would be led by a government nominee, intended to be the Sports Minister. It was tampered with, he says, to delete the reference to the "government nominee."
So who fiddled with the paperwork to land Mr Kalmadi the much-coveted Chairman's post that he would later exploit so resolutely? Even today, India's bid documents on the official Games site show Mr Kalmadi as Vice-Chairman. The government's auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General states, "In our opinion the primary objective of the document titled as the 'updated bid' was to orchestrate the appointment of the president of the IOA, Suresh Kalmadi, as the chairman of the OC executive board; since as per the May 2003 bid document, the President of the IOA would only be the Vice Chairman."
Mr Verma also challenges Mr Maken's version on another front. He says that after the UPA came to power in 2004, it misinterpreted the contract for the Games. Mr Verma says India did not have a Commonwealth Games Association - this body was to be set up. But the government that succeeded his accepted that the Indian Olympic Association would fulfill this role; and that allowed an organisation already headed by Mr Kalmadi to vote him in as the chief of the Games' Organising Committee.
As the UPA tries to deflect the blame, there appears to be several holes in its explanation. For example, a Group of Ministers met in October 2004 and decided Sunil Dutt, who was Sports Minister at the time, would head the Organising Committee. This decision was reversed within days in favour of Mr Kalmadi. An upset Mr Dutt wrote to the Prime Minister to officially protest. In December, however, the Prime Minister's Office ratified Kalmadi's chairmanship.
The UPA has also been left somewhat exposed by letters written to the Prime Minister's Office by Mani Shankar Aiyar, who replaced Mr Dutt as Sports Minister. In 2007, Mr Aiyar warned that under Mr Kalmadi's stewardship, the Organising Committee was indulging in financial malpractices. There was no action taken.