NEW DELHI: Commonwealth Games is slowly turning out to be a story of
spiralling costs. Sample this: An RTI reply — originally filed by RTI
activist Gopal Prasad — has found that Delhi University which had
initially estimated Rs 100 crore for the development of the Rugby
Stadium and six practice venues in 2007 suddenly found costs shooting
up two years later in 2009 by almost 200%. The project cost was
finally settled at Rs 306.41 crore by the expenditure finance
committee.
This decision was taken after a meeting under the chairmanship of the
then finance secretary, ministry of finance on June 23, 2009 after the
validity of the contract entered into on August 2, 2007 expired.
Originally, the contractor — Engineers India Limited — was to complete
work in 24 months. "In view of the fact that the work is to be
completed, the contract is extended till July 15, 2010," the DU
executive engineer wrote to VC Deepak Pental.
The EIL was supposed to build the Rugby Stadium, training venues for
netball and boxing, training venues for Rugby at Ramjas, KMC, SRCC and
St Stephen's, training venue for athletics at Polo Ground, lay
synthetic track at the same venue and build internal roads and carry
out landscaping. However, three of these practice venues were "found
unsuitable".
Among the representatives of DU who attended that crucial finance
ministry meeting were VC Deepak Pental, finance officer S K Jaipuriya,
university engineer Ashok Srivastava and assistant engineer Jagbir
Singh.
DU justified the rise in costs saying there were three principal
reasons behind the cost escalation. Levies not included in the
proposal initially, increase in the scope of work as per the
specifications of the OC and the Commonwealth Games Federation and
increase in the cost of iron and steel were cited as the major causes.
In fact, joint secretary, finance ministry, Meena Aggarwal even
objected to the claim that cost of iron and steel had gone up and went
on to record that "such a wide difference meant that the estimates
drawn up by the consultants were inadequate".
In the same RTI reply, the sports ministry has given details of the
exact money released to the various agencies for the Games. While the
total money spent on infrastructure was Rs 2,904 crores (as reported
in the TOI on Wednesday), the total estimate of money released is Rs
5503 crore.
No comments:
Post a Comment