Whose money is it anyway?
India’s sports czar Suresh Kalmadi has a lot of explaining to do. He has to explain how, with incomplete stadiums and other facilities, he is going to stage “the best Commonwealth Games ever” in October. He has to explain how the cost estimates for this rather meaningless event that actually celebrates British colonialism have increased an incredible 17 times from the original estimates.
He also needs to address the findings of the central government’s Central Vigilance Commission (CVC); its report has revealed huge irregularities of crores of rupees in the tenders issued for the Commonwealth Games. The CVC has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to register a corruption case against officials involved in various projects. CVC officials have found evidence of massive corruption, including awarding work at higher rates to bidders, poor quality of construction and allocation of work to ineligible organisations in different construction works related to the Games, which are going to cost the country around Rs20,000 crore. Now, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has ordered a status review of all projects.
Then there is the matter of a huge amount of money being paid through the Royal Bank of Scotland to two small, shadowy companies in London – AM Vehicle Hire and AM Films – the Organising Committee (OC) of the Commonwealth Games transferred funds worth £247,469 (Rs1.80 crore) to these two companies in October 2009, during the Queen’s Baton Relay function in London for certain ‘services’ including providing mobile toilets, road barriers, rental cars, etc. In addition £25,000 (Rs18.25 lakh) is being transferred every month into the account of AM Films. So far, a total amount of £450,000 (Rs3.29 crore) has been transferred, and the British government (not the Indian government) suspected a fraud and raised questions in the matter.
Mr Kalmadi has angrily denied any fraud and waved a printout of what he claimed was an email sent by one Raju Sebastian of the Indian High Commissioner’s office in London recommending the name of the company. The Indian High Commission says Sebastian was too junior an employee to make any such decision, and is looking into whether the email has been doctored. If the latter is true, an additional charge of forgery will descend on the OC.
But what seems to suggest that the OC is hosting a no-holds-barred lootfest is the ‘hire charges’ it is paying for equipment to be used for the Games. To rent the equipment for the Games – which last a period of 45 days – the rates of hire are many times what it would cost to buy the equipment outright. The OC is going to pay Rs9.75 lakh to hire each treadmill for a month-and-a-half. Chairs are going to be rented at Rs8,378 each. Each small 100-litre refrigerator has a rental tag of an incredible Rs42,202, approximately six to seven times its cost.
Diesel power generators are being hired from a high Rs15 per unit of electricity to an absurd Rs80 per unit, at different locations. Each two-tonne air conditioner, which costs around Rs40,000 at best, is being ‘rented’ for Rs70,827 to Rs1,87,957. Liquid soap dispensers are being ‘hired’ for Rs200 each in some areas and over Rs10,000 each in others. All these rates have been cleared directly by the Organising Committee, of which Mr Kalmadi is the chairman.
These deals are going to totally cost a staggering Rs650 crore, and the loot is being shared between four contractors. The most astonishing thing is that the OC defends this, saying the rates are on par or less than previous Comonwealth Games…! Is the purpose of staging such Games to enhance the country’s prestige or to loot the public exchequer and ruin its image?
