TSR scam: CBI indicts Kalmadi for 'bending, overlooking' rules

NEW DELHI: Sacked Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee (OC) chief Suresh Kalmadi not only had a "disregard" for transparency while granting the TSR contract for CWG 2010, he had also sidelined two OC officials for opposing the "fraudulent" manner in which the contract was awarded to a Swiss firm.
The CBI, in its chargesheet, has alleged that ex-OC secretary-general Lalit Bhanot, Kalmadi's confidante and co-accused, had also overlooked the rules and conspired to favour Swiss Timing.
Surjit Lal, one of the accused, had cited that the ministry of sports had approved the eligibility criteria for the TSR bidders. However, investigations have "revealed that there was no approval of the government in respect of criteria/contents for eligibility criteria," the chargesheet said. It also added that ministry of sports "never accorded" an approval for awarding TSR contract to Swiss Timing on a single-vendor basis.
Kalmadi also "bent" rules and "overlooked" the objections raised by two OC members — Vijay Kumar Gautam and Sujit Panigrahi — to grant the contract to the Swiss company, causing a loss of over Rs 95 crore to the exchequer. Gautam and Panigrahi are also the two key prosecution witnesses named in the chargsheet.
The CBI has alleged that Gautam and Panigrahi were divested of their powers, and shunted out after they opposed the tendering process. "...in order to suppress continuous opposition of Gautam and Panigrahi to the conspiracy of the accused OC officials, Gautam was divested of the supervision of technology Functional Area and Suresh Kalmadi had entrusted the work to his confidant and co-conspirator V K Verma," the charge sheet said.
"At the same time Sandeep Arya, who had earlier in September 2009 been suddenly appointed consultant on the direction of Kalmadi, was appointed the ADG over Panigrahi," it said.
Vijay Kumar Gautam, COO of OC financial committee (OCFC), who was the overall supervisory officer of Technology Functional Area (FA), had opposed the "fraudulent manipulations" in the request for proposals (RFP) by Kalmadi and his associates to favour Swiss Timing. Consequently, he was subsequently relieved of all his responsibilities.
Sujit Panigrahi, ADG (technology), who was one of the special attendees at the 8th OCFC meeting for approval of RFP, was forced to resign to Kalmadi in January, 2010.