New Delhi:
Suresh Kalmadi - a PR nightmare for the government - is about to gift some more sleepless nights. Mr Kalmadi, who served as the Chairman of the Organising Committee for the Commonwealth Games, is in jail for corruption.
Now, the government's auditor has questioned the decision of the Prime Minister's Office to make Mr Kalmadi the head the Organising Committee (OC). A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), to be presented in Parliament in the next few days, states, "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."
Mr Kalmadi was made head of the Organising Committee in December 2004 when he was President of the Indian Olympic Association. Then Sports Minister Sunil Dutt had opposed Mr Kalmadi's selection. He wrote to the Prime Minister pointing out that the government had earlier said that the Sports Minister would be in charge of the Commonwealth Games.
Sources say that the Prime Minister's Office did not intervene to select Mr Kalmadi, and that the PM's Office merely followed the details of the contract it inherited from Atal Behari Vajpayee's government which was in power when India's bid for the Games was accepted.
The first bid that India made in May 2003 to the Commonwealth Games Federation, the parent body, included a sort of org chart that said a government nominee would lead the Organizing Committee. That bid was revised in December 2003, and reportedly said that the head of the Indian Olympic Association would chair the Organizing Committee.
The CAG report 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."
In 2007, Mani Shankar Aiyar who was then Sports Minister also wrote to the Prime Minister's Office, warning that the Committee headed by Mr Kalmadi was infected with financial malpractices.
Guided by Mr Kalmadi, the Organising Committee seemed to treat the Commonwealth Games as some sort of personal fiefdom, awarding contracts for equipment and services to companies who quoted the most expensive rates.