Indian games chief arrested in graft probe

Suresh Kalmadi, the Indian politician who presided over New Delhi’s controversial Commonwealth Games last year, has been arrested for allegedly fixing the contract for procuring equipment for the competition.
The arrest of Mr Kalmadi, a parliamentarian from the ruling Congress party, follows a long probe into preparations for last October's games, which featured teams from the 53 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations, mostly members of the former British empire.
Intended to showcase India as an emerging economic powerhouse, the shoddy and scandal-plagued preparations, dogged by cost overruns, delays and allegations of graft, instead cast an embarrassing spotlight on its deficiencies.
Long-time president of the Indian Olympic Association, Mr Kalmadi was the global face of debacle, blithely insisting New Delhi would be ready to host the games, even as deadlines were missed repeatedly, and foreign officials condemned the athletes’ housing as unfit for human habitation just days before the competitors’ arrival.
On Monday, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested him for his role in awarding a $31m contract for timing and scoring equipment to a Swiss firm, Swiss Timing Ltd, saying in a statement that Mr Kalmadi was involved in “wrongfully restricting and eliminating competition from other suppliers in a premeditated and planned manner”.
The contract, which the CBI alleged in overpayments of around $21m, is but one small example of the pervasive corruption believed to have affected preparations for the games, whose cost soared to $15bn, way over the original estimates made in 2002.
Mr Kalmadi’s arrest also coincides with the CBI filing criminal charges against Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, the daughter of the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, for allegedly receiving kickbacks in the 2G telecoms scam, which saw highly coveted telecom spectrum allocated to favoured companies at throwaway prices.
Both Mr Kalmadi and Ms Karunanidhi deny any wrongdoing.
Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led government is under intense pressure to demonstrate that it is serious about rooting out corruption that has sapped much of the public goodwill it had when it returned to power after parliamentary elections in May 2009.
“The entire governance machine has just been paralysed for the past eight months or so,” said Swapan Das Gupta, an independent political analyst. “These scandals have really eroded their decision-making ability.”
However, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, said the arrest of Mr Kalmadi, and the charges against Ms Kanimozhi, whose father is a Congress party ally, would not be sufficient to reinvigorate the government.
“I don’t think it’s actually going to help them recover political ground. The perception is that they are not doing it out of their own initiative,” Mr Mehta said.
The Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed Mr Kalmadi’s arrest, but suggested he was just a “small fry” and that the chain of accountability reached higher into the Congress party.

Meanwhile, India’s sports minister, Ajay Maken, said he would write to the Indian Olympic Association, demanding Mr Kalmadi’s removal as the organisation’s president.

In the months since the Commonwealth Games, seven of Mr Kalmadi’s inner circle from the organising committee, and representatives of three small companies, have been arrested for alleged wrongdoing in connection with various contracts for goods and services for the games.