CWG mess: PM steps in, to meet Gill and Reddy

Agencies

New Delhi, 23 September 2010: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stepped in to clear the Commonwealth Games mess. Singh has called Union Sports Minister MS Gill and Union Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy, who also heads the Group of Minister on the Commonwealth Games, for a meeting at 5:00 PM on Thursday evening to discuss the preparations for the Games which are scheduled to be held in Delhi from October 3 to 14.

 

Cabinet Secretary KM Chandrasekhar and other top officials will also attend the meeting. There has mounting international criticism of New Delhi’s preparedness to hold the Games and the meeting will discuss ways and means to speed up the preparations. The meeting comes two days after international delegates lambasted the Games Village as "filthy and uninhabitable" and top teams such as Canada, Scotland and New Zealand delayed their departure to the Indian capital.

 

Meanwhile, Congress MP and former Union sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has slammed the Commonwealth Games Federation top bosses - Mike Fennell and Mike Hooper - saying they have no right to criticise the Games.

 

 

"Fennel and Hooper, the two ’Mikes’ that I refer to them as were associated with Kalmadi (Suresh) and till recent they were claiming that everything would be spectacular. So, now what right do they have that at the last moment, to save their own faces they put the blame on someone else. I am not ready to believe that Mike Fennel or Mike Hooper has any right to criticise us this way," said Aiyar.

 

The Games’ build-up has been nothing short of disaster with two mishaps being reported in the last two days from Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue for the Games. The Organising Committee and the government have also been left embarrassed by the collapse of a foot over-bridge near the Jawaharlal Nehru and the falling of some tiles at the weightlifting arena at the same venue.

 

Several allegations of corruption have also been leveled against top officials of the Organising Committee.