PMO steps in to clear games mess

Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar asked to speed up work, probe corruption

Worried about the allegations of corruption and slow pace of work, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has finally stepped in to salvage the Commonwealth Games to be hosted in Delhi in October. According to bureaucratic sources, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar has been asked by the Prime Minister to take a more “pro-active” role in the preparations of the games. Chandrasekhar is the most senior bureaucrat in the country.

According to the sources, the Prime Minister's Office has asked Chandrasekhar to do a special review of the status of the ongoing Commonwealth Games projects, most of which are handled by agencies like the Central Public Works Department and have overshot both the budget and the deadline. The deadline for all Commonwealth Games projects ended today, but a large part of the work remains incomplete.

The Prime Minister’s Office also wants Chandrasekhar to find out why the deadlines were not met even as funds earmarked for the games were enhanced from time to time. Chandrsekhar will look into the corruption charges levelled in issuing tenders. A top bureaucrat told Business Standard, “Many decisions might have been followed in letter but certainly not in spirit.”

Chandrasekhar, as the head of the monitoring committee, was already overseeing the co-ordination between different agencies involved in the preparations for the Commonwealth Games. For the government, history is repeating itself. During Indira Gandhi’s regime in 1982, when the capital was hosting the Asian Games, she had to rope in Jagmohan at the last moment to speed up the preparations. Jagmohan had got the work done and saved the government from embarrassment.

The decision came in a dramatic way after Suresh Kalmadi, the chief of the organising committee for the Commonwealth Games, held a press conference to refute all charges of corruption. Kalmadi said there was total transparency in all the deals and “every pie was accounted for”. He added that stadiums which have been completed will be taken over by the organising committee from tomorrow.

The instructions to Chandrasekhar by the Prime Minister’s Office are also an embarrassment for the Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government. Both Dikshit and Kalmadi had insisted that all preparations were going smoothly and things would be completed on time. Dikshit said today that there was no need to press the panic button and the Commonwealth Games would take place without any hitch.