Author: NDTV Correspondent
Publication: NDTV.com
Date: June 2, 2011
URL: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/pm-was-alerted-about-kalmadis-excesses-in-2007-109654
Letters between former Sports Minister Mani
Shankar Aiyar and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reveal that the ministry had
alerted the PM about former Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chairman
Suresh Kalmadi's "excesses" and "dictatorial style of functioning"
in 2007 itself.
In one of these letters, accessed under Right
to Information Act, the former Sports Minister had said, "Without a drastic
overhaul of both the executive and Organizing Committee for the Commonwealth
Games, I fear that it will prove to be practically impossible for the government
to significantly address the excesses of Suresh Kalmadi and his cohorts."
In another letter to the PM dated October
25, 2007, Mani Shankar had written, "I grow increasingly alarmed at the
profligacy of the chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth
Games 2010. The Ministry has failed to establish a genuinely cooperative working
relationship with the Organizing Committee."
"The chairman stooped so low as to describe
us (Sports Ministry) as 'cartoons sitting in one room in Shastri Bhawan,"
another letter read. "Chairman (Kalmadi) saw the Ministry as a milch
cow to extract as much money as he can," it added.
Kalmadi was arrested on April 25 this year
by the CBI in connection with the CWG scam. He has been charged with fraud,
conspiracy and acts of corruption and faces seven years in jail if convicted.
