Now, CBI probes PMO's man on CWG top panel

NEW DELHI: Two letters from Jarnail Singh, the PMO's appointee in the Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee, strongly supporting the controversial Timing, Scoring, Results (TSR) contract to Swiss Timing have come under the CBI's scanner. The OC chief Suresh Kalmadi has been arrested by the agency for this case. The contract has beenquestioned because the eligibility criteria were fixed in such a way that onlyone company, Swiss Timing, could have benefited from it. It was also allegedthat an inflated price of Rs 141 crore was paid to the company.Minutes of various meetings of the OC, convened from early 2009,indicate that some members of the OC, including secretary general Lalit Bhanot,had made up their minds months ago that Swiss Timing would get the TSR contract.Jarnail Singh joined the OC as its CEO in the latter half of 2009and his role was to ensure that preparations for the Games were on schedule.While he had to balance delivery speed with financial integrity but his twoletters, written to sports ministry officials on December 5, 2009 and again onFebruary 15, 2010, show that he was aggressively pushing the TSR deal with SwissTiming. The TSR deal was first questioned in a letter signed by awoman, Sangita Goyal, who claimed to be the convener of Anti-Corruption Trustbased in Noida. It was brought to the notice of both the OC and the sportsministry. The then sports secretary, Sindhushree Khullar, demanded to know fromthe OC what it had to say about the matter raised by Goyal. In hisresponse to Khullar on December 5, Singh recounted how the OC had sent over twoofficials to Goyal's address only to find a different person residing there. Hesaid: "The investigation by the OC officers clearly establishes that the person(Sangita Goyal) and the trust (Anti-Corruption Trust) are fictitious and theemail has been circulated with malicious intent of derailing the TSR procurementprocess." Singh seems to be in complete agreement with the OC'sdecision in favour of Swiss Timing. He wrote: "As the case documents confirm; ofthe two bids received (one from M/s MSL Software and the other from M/s SwissTiming Omega), only M/s Swiss Timing Omega met the pre-qualification benchmarkand were accordingly cleared for opening of technical bids as per procedure."In fact, Singh pleaded for speed arguing that appointment of the TSRservice provider was "a time-critical decision, which is behind schedule by oversix months." In another letter written by him to joint secretary(sports) R Bhatnagar on February 15, 2010, Singh defended the decision in favourof Swiss Timing yet again. He wrote: "I would like to state that the award oncontract to M/s Swiss Timing for TSR has been the subject of intense scrutinyright from the inception stage of this tender." He pointed out howthe deal had been studied in detail by the OC's finance committee which had twosenior government officials, the finance sub-committee, which was chaired bysecretary (urban development) and also by the executive board of the OC whichhad several senior government officials besides the president and the CEO of theCommonwealth Games Federation. Repeated attempts to contact JarnailSingh for his comments failed. For quite some time, Suresh Kalmadi has beeninsisting that he alone should not be made to bear the entire responsibility forthe alleged financial malpractices that happened during the organization of theGames as other senior people were a party to the decisions. Now that he is inthe custody, he is expected to refer to these correspondences to plead his case.