RTI reveals cost of rugby venue went up 200%

Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN, Oct 24, 2010

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.