New Delhi:
As the debate over whether the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam could have been avoided with better scrutiny rages on, NDTV now has proof that the Prime Minister's point person in the CWG Organising Committee (OC) failed to enforce a scrutiny of bids that could have changed the CWG scam story and saved the government plenty of embarrassment.
NDTV has accessed a secret internal note of the OC, dated December 7, 2009. In the note, VK Verma, the Director General of the Organising Committee, asked for comments on the Sports Ministry's questions about a complaint on the bidding process for the Timing, Scoring, Results or TSR contract on which the CBI's case in the CWG scam is based. The CBI has said the TSR contract was awarded by showing undue favour to a company called Swiss Timing Omega, causing a loss of Rs 95 crore to the exchequer.
Mr Verma suggested that in order to remain transparent, the procurement status should be put up for independent scrutiny and the government should advise the OC on the next step. But on this very note, Jarnail Singh, the CEO of the Organising Committee wrote, "We may send a report to the Ministry of Sports as per the draft letter proposed, however, we should not mark our reply to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), as the CVC has not taken cognizance of any irregularity so far."
Mr Singh was specially appointed by the Prime Minister's Office to ensure that preparations for the Games were on schedule - his job was to balance delivery speed with financial integrity.
When NDTV contacted Mr Singh over why did he suggest that the investigation agencies not be kept in the loop despite the fact that a formal complaint had been lodged, he refused to speak on camera but in his defence said, "Since we had got a reference from the Ministry we replied to them. None of the three investigating agencies had asked us for any information."
The question now is did the Prime Minister's point person in the Organising Committee fail to enforce a scrutiny of bids, starting with the TSR bids? The note in question was written in December 2009, a full ten months before the Games were held. If the CEO of the OC had not stopped the issue from being vetted by the CVC, then perhaps the bids for other contracts would have also gone under the scanner much earlier, and could the UPA government then have escaped the CWG scam taint?