How a single bidder bagged Rs700 crore Games Village deal

Who owns Emaar-MGF, the firm that bagged the Rs700-crore Commonwealth Games Village work? How did it secure the prestigious project beating 14 other strong contenders? As the probe into the whole gamut of Games scandals goes deeper, serious questions on  political connections of the company have risen.

The Delhi government, Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the organisers assert His Excellency Mohammad Ali Alabbar of Dubai is promoter of this real estate company. However, DNA can reveal that while Emaar is wholly owned by the prince, the company that bagged the Games Village contract is Emaar-MGF. MGF has deep Indian connections and its owners are closely connected to top Congress leaders.

The brain behind MGF is Sudhir Sareen, who was earlier a director in Emaar-MGF. Sudhir came into the limelight when the enforcement directorate raided his Greater Kailash residence in New Delhi a decade ago in connection with the Rs133-crore urea scam. He was considered close to  then prime minister the late PV Narasimha Rao’s son and then fertilizers and chemicals minister Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav.

He quietly slipped out when the raids were on and later his name disappeared from the case. He opted to settle in Dubai as an NRI and made forays into real estate business and roped in the Emaar group to do business with MGF.

The political reach of MGF partly explains how the contract for the unique public-private partnership project could have gone to a single bidder. Everyone involved in the process, including Delhi’s lieutenant governor Tejindra Khanna, chief minister Sheila Dixit, head of the group of ministers Jaipal Reddy and DDA vice-chairman declared Emaar-MGF the sole technically qualified bidder.

The firm’s power could be imagined from the fact that it out-bid rivals even before the financial bidding process was in place. A total of 14 developers had requested for bidding qualification. Eleven developers qualified and of these only two — Emaar-MGF and M/s DLF — were short-listed. But DLF’s bid was technically disqualified.

It was a gold mine of a project as the Delhi government was offering 27.17 acres on the bank of the Yamuna near the Akshardham temple for free. The builder was to spend money to construct 1,168 flats in 34 towers. The covered area was 4 million sq ft, including 4,000 bedrooms. Under the arrangement with the Delhi government, the developer would sell the flats after CWG and profits would be shared.

The government started the process of bidding in June 2007,  four years after it won the bid to host CWG. It decided not to issue fresh tenders for the project as it had no time and awarded the contract to a single bidder.

But Union urban development minister Jaipal Reddy defends the decision saying, “We could have cancelled the contract. But it would have meant huge delay. When we gave the developer extra money, we had no option. But we revoked his bank guarantee of Rs183 crore. DDA will make profit.”