But organising committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi says he has no information.
NEW DELHI: The Sports Ministry and the organising committee of the 2010 Commonwealth Games are engaged in a tug of war over the control of the event.
On Sunday, even as the chairman of the organising committee, Suresh Kalmadi, was partying along with his group in a 2008 Commonwealth Games for the Youth countdown bash in Pune, Union Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar fired a salvo at the panel from Delhi. The Sports Minister announced here that his Ministry was trimming down the budget for the 2010 Games to Rs 5,000 crore from Rs 7000 crore after a review of some of the expenditures.
“I have shifted some expenditures, which do not directly come under us, to bring down the costs. Now the budget for the Games is Rs 5,000 crore,” Aiyar said.
The Minister also took a potshot at the Kalmadi-headed Indian Olympic Association, which has been the focus of his criticism ever since he assumed office. Aiyar said: “All that the IOA has done is to imitate Tony Blair, who took a bus-load of celebrities around London. But that is no way to make the Games a national event. What does anybody in a remote village know about Commonwealth Games? This is not the way to make it a national event. If you have to really make it into a national event, you have to spend Rs 5,000 crore on Games and another 2,000 crore on people of India.”
Kalmadi, meanwhile, said he had no information. “I have no idea. He (Aiyar) has approved whatever budget was placed before him a few days back. As far as I know, there is no reduction,” he told DNA.
Strangely, nobody in the organising committee was willing to say just how much was the budget they had demanded from the Sports Ministry. Kalmadi said: “Right now it’s difficult for me to tell you exactly what the total budget is. I am in the midst of many people now.”
The financial advisor to the 2010 CWG, Vijaylakshmi Gupta, a bureaucrat on deputation from the Defence Ministry, pretended not to know the amount. She said, “Whatever the chairman (Kalmadi) is saying, is the actual position. I have no knowledge of the exact budget promised by the Sports Ministry.” The secretary-general for the 2010 CWG panel, Lalit Bhanot, and its treasurer, AK Mattoo, were on their way back from Pune and could not be contacted.
