New Delhi: Just over two months to the Commonwealth Games and it's not just the mess on the roads Delhi is dealing with. The Games Organising Committee has awarded contracts to hire equipment at unheard of rates.
Treadmills are being hired for nearly 10 lakh rupees and fridges for officials for 42 thousand rupees a piece. Is this where our taxes go? According to a report in the Economic Times the OC has paid Rs 9.75 lakh to hire each treadmill for a month-and-a-half.
To put that in perspective, one can buy from the very posh Harrods in London a treadmill for Rs 7 lakhs or a little over a lakh here in India. One could get a whole gymnasium for that much or buy a very fancy treadmill for a lakh and a half.
Special chairs are hired for Kalmadi and other officials at Rs 8000 each and 100-litre refrigerators to cool drinks for officials at Rs 42000 a piece. However, the Organising Committee secretary defends the high hiring cost, citing better quality and complete package.
Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad has urged the Prime Minister to take up the Commonwealth issue personally as it is the nation's pride.
Prasad has said in a letter: "Mr. Prime Minister, it's time for you to intervene. How long you and your government will keep on bailing the mismanagement of Delhi government and the gross impropriety of Mr. Kalmadi?"
"We support the Commonwealth Games as national pride is attached to it but it can't be an excuse for loot," he said further in his letter to the prime minister.
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