New Delhi:
A day before Parliament resumes, BJP top leaders met today to discuss the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report on the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi last October.
In the meeting, the BJP chalked out a strategy to take on the government over various issues that emerged out the top government auditor's report.
"We had a meeting to devise strategy on how to go about various reports in Parliament. The NDA will hold a meeting tomorrow to decide on how to take forward CAG report on CWG in Parliament," said SS Ahluwalia, a BJP leader and Rajya Sabha member.
NDTV has learnt the BJP may demand a discussion on the CAG report and target the government over Suresh Kalmadi's appointment as the Chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee for which the CAG report has blamed the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). (
Read: Highlights of the auditor's explosive report on CWG)
Sports Minister Ajay Maken had issued a clarification on the CAG report in Parliament but the BJP now says he misled the House. With the report's sharp indictment of the PMO 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 CAG report. Mrs Dikshit, the report finds, cost the government hundreds of crores through mismanagement. "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.
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. (
Read: CAG report blames Sheila for losses, PMO for endorsing Kalmadi)