Commonwealth Games Scam 2010
-Suresh Kalmadi Vs CBI 2013
-by Muhammad Iftekhar Khan, student of LLB(Hons.), at Banaras Hindu University.
The Nineteenth Commonwealth Games 2010, held in capital city New Delhi, proved to be a double-edged event for the nation.
On the one hand India bags total of 101 medals including 38 gold medals, leading to finish second after Australia, this was the first time ever in the history of sport that India had clinged more than 100 medals in any event. While on the other hand the joy of the event was overshadowed by one of the biggest scams in the Indian history. The event was not only hampered by the organized fraud, poor management and ill treatment of the athletes and the delegates, but also a whopping scam of around 70,000 crores.
Commonwealth Games XIX 2010
The Commonwealth Games is an international multi-sport event, held in every 4 years, among the athletes of Commonwealth Nation mostly consisting of the former British Empire. The event was first held in year 1930 and in the year 2018 this event became the first global multi-sport event to feature equal number of men’s and women’s medal event.
In 2010, India was voted to be the host of this event, and 71 countries had participated in the event held at New Delhi. India Chose Mr. Suresh kalmadi, as the chairperson of the organizing committee. Indian government took this event an opportunity to showcase its strength to the world and to develop its infrastructural capability in order to attract the tourist of the world. But, unfortunately the things doesn’t went as planned and the event turned to be a blot on India’s face, and with the pilferage of thousand of crores, this XIX edition became the most expensive edition of the event’s history.
The Scam
After being voted as host, Indian government formed a Commonwealth Games committee in the chairmanship of Suresh Kalmadi, Randhir Singh as vice chairman, Lalit Bhanot as Secretary General, Anil kumar Khanna as treasurer and some other members namely Michael Funnel, Mike Hooper, Rakesh Mehta, and N. Ramchandran.
Aproximately 12 billion rupees have been spent on infrastucure growth and twenty cities have been developed for tourist destination. A special village was developed for the Commonwealth Game called “Game Village”. The actual budget of 1620 crores was anticipated to develop the venues at par with international standard, and other works, however it actually went to around 11500 crores.
Inspite of this huge amount several issues got their place, like mismanagement, irregularities and non completion of works in the stipulated time. Along with that several complaints that were made by the athletes and the delegates like dirty quarters, leaky walls, the never ending construction, inflation, dengue fever made the situation more worse. All in all it became a major hoax in the history of India.
Several institutional watchdogs were ready to enquire the floating news of discrepancies and the irregularity and is waiting for the end of the event. After the event Central Vigilance Commission revealed eye opening facts and figures in its report and shows the real picture of what was happening behind the curtain. In its report CVC revealed the irregularities in 14 CWG projects by 71 organisations in 129 works. It was notes that suresh kalmadi, the chairman of the organizing committee of the games had offered Swiss Timing a contract of Rs 141 crore for its time-limiting equipments, which was unduly high by Rs 95 crores.
Further it was found that most of the contracts made under this was nothing but the inflationary contracts. Instead of selecting companies that was offering better deals at rates, equipment and facilities, companies that have over-quoted have been employed and subsequently the companies with better deals were disqualified.
Report showed that Delhi Government spent 60 lakh to purchase a bus in the chain of improving transport facilities, while the actual cost of the bus was only 40 lakh. 3000 thousands of crores were spent on extending metro facilities and it was found that an estimate of 10 lakhs per pillar were made while the actual cost was only of 7lakhs. The most interesting and unique attraction in this event was an aerostat which costed around 70 crore, was actually of 40 crore. These are the few major misappropriation of the fund, the report contains the never ending list.
CBI and the Investigation
The case was given to CBI, which by submitting the chargesheet termed Suresh Kalmadi as the mastermind within 104cr Temporal order, Evaluation and Result devices(TSR) scam. Along with Mr. kalmadi CBI has charged ten others including Lalit Bhanot, former director general VK Verma, ASV Prasad, Surjit Lal. CBI also charged two firms- Swiss temporal order and a Hyderabad based firms named AKR construction.
All were charged with criminal conspiracy u/s 120(B), cheating u/s 420, forgery u/s 468 and document tamoering u/s 471 of Inian Penal Code along with section 13(1)(b) read with section 13(2) i.e. criminal misconduct by public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Kalmadi along with lalit Bhanot was arrested and sent to jail, however was given bail after 10 months; case was instituted as Suresh Kalmadi v. CBI 2013.
Conclusion
The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be remembered as a paradox, it will be remembered for the extraordinary performance of the Indian athletes and will also be remembered as how it shattered the image of India infront of the world. With the very beginning the event was shrouded with controversies which continues aftermath of the completion of the event. The reports of the CVC and CBI brought out the discrepancies and malpractices in the event, which also got the required media attention, but unfortunately like other scams of the country this issue also have still been not resolved. In the subsequent month another report of CAG on 2G spectrum over shadowed this case, and the involvement of several high profile politicians also contributed for the same.
