CAG report on Commonwealth Games in Monsoon session: Vinod Rai

NEW DELHI: The government auditor CAG today said it will soon finalise its report on the conduct of Commonwealth Games which will be tabled in the next session of Parliament.

"Yes...certainly," the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said when asked if the CWG report would be tabled in the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

Rai said his office is in the final stages of drafting the CWG report. "It is being finalised. We could not table it in the Budget session as it was truncated," he added.

The CAG report on CWG could not be tabled in the Budget session of Parliament which got curtailed on account of assembly elections in five states.

The Budget session which usually continues till May was closed on March 25.

The CAG had in November last year said that it was conducting a broad-based audit of the overlays involved in the Games and a report would be ready by January.

The two-week long Commonwealth Games (CWG), held here between October 3-14, 2010, cost the nation an estimated Rs 70,000 crore.

The Organising Committee (OC) of the Games is in the thick of allegations of corruption, ranging from favouritism in award of various contracts to expensive hire of training equipment and inflating costs of building contracts.

CAG, according to sources, is vetting the expenditures incurred on different CWG related projects.

During the course of the audit, the CAG had send audit memos to the Organising Committee seeking their response on the findings.

In a communication to the OC in December, the CAG had said that some of the items for the Games were procured at prices higher than the market rates.

The OC had overstated rates of the items contracted by allowing some sellers to form a cartel, which then put in costlier bids, according to the memo.

Further, the auditor in another memo had pointed out that former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor had been paid 30,000 USD (about Rs 13 lakh) for attending 12 meetings of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee and for his consultancy services.

Tharoor had rendered the consultancy services between September, 2008 and January, 2009, before he took charge as a minister.

Other agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate and Central Vigilance Commission are investigating the officials of the OC.