I was not looking after technical affairs: Kalmadi tells court

Kalmadi and 10 others have been charged under various sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act for "illegally" awarding contract for installing Timing, Scoring and Results system for the 2010 games to Swiss Timing.

The CBI had alleged that the accused had decided to award the contract to Swiss Timing even before it had bid for it and it caused a loss of over Rs 90 crore to the state exchequer.

Advancing the arguments on charges before Special CBI Judge Talwant Singh, Kalmadi's counsel said the procurement of equipments for the games was to be done by government agencies and venue owners and the OC was not responsible for that.

Senior advocate H H Ponda, who appeared for Kalmadi, said the facts given in the CBI's charge sheet were contrary to the documents which the agency had filed in the court.

"Kalmadi's job was for sports affairs only and not for technical affairs," he said.

Ponda said for procurement of equipments, a committee was constituted and no illegality was committed in the award of contract.

"If I wanted to do something clandestine, I would not have formed a committee at all," he said adding that the committee consisted of members from different departments.

"These all (committee members) were totally different people who were in the committee. They were not my men.... If there was something wrong, any one of them could have raised an objection," he said. (More)