New Delhi:
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.