CBI Director briefs Parl panel sub group on CWG scam

A Parliamentary panel's sub group examining "irregularities" in Commonwealth Games 2010 today decided to go into the reasons of the closure of 18 cases related to the scam as it heard out CBI Director Anil Kumar Sinha who briefed the panel about the status of cases.
While the PAC is headed by Congress leader K V Thomas, Shantaram Naik, Congress MP from Rajya Sabha is the convenor of the sub-committee, which is examining matters like the status of various cases related to the scam, how the infrastructure created during the CWG are being used now and how can recurrence of such anomalies during organising such big games can be avoided in future.

The irregularities, that were mentioned in a CAG report tabled in Parliament in 2011, had kicked up a huge controversy and the CWG Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi, then a Congress MP, was put behind the bars during the UPA II government.
Sinha briefed the panel about the cases into which probe is still going on, cases which are closed and one under which conviction has already happened.
The panel was told that 18 cases have been closed and the the sub-committee decided go into the reasons why those cases were closed.
"The committee will go through these cases. The committee will find out why those cases were closed and will do the needful," a source said adding if necessary the committee may recommend reopening of those cases.

In one of the cases, three persons close to Kalmadi came out of jail as the charge sheet could not be filed within the stipulated 90-day period because the information that was supposed to come from foreign countries concerned did not come in time, sources in the panel said.

The panel was, however, told that cases have already been pursued against them.
The panel also wanted to know what disciplinary actions have been taken against some of the accused by the departments concerned.
The CBI Director was also earlier summoned by the main committee chaired by BJP member Murli Manohar Joshi. However, Lok Sabha was later dissolved and a new committee chaired by Thomas is now in place after 2014 general elections.

The sub-committee in its earlier meeting had called
officials from six other ministries--Home, Finance, Sports, Urban Development, Health, Social Justice and Empowerment, the Cabinet Secretary as well as officials from the present PMO.
The panel's sub-committee was constituted on September 4 with S S Ahluwalia, Nishikant Dubey and Vijay Goel (BJP) and Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD) as members.
The PAC, which was earlier headed Murli Manohar Joshi, had given a draft report.
The CAG had criticised the then Manmohan Singh government's decisions saying it led to huge escalation in costs and pointed to a hurried approach at the last minute which led to many descrepancies.

The CAG report had also alleged that the main bid document of the Games were tampered with and questioned the authenticity of the expenditure of the Games.
The sub-committee feels that more sittings were required to finalise the fresh draft because in the last five years lots of changes have taken place. CBI has closed some of the cases out of 33 it scrutinised.