PM stops Gill from washing his hands of Games mess

At a meeting of the Cabinet today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cut short Sports Minister M S Gill's bid to "clarify" on preparations for the Commonwealth Games (CWG), a move that was viewed by colleagues as a clear snub to the Minister.

There were no raised voices at the 15-minute-long meeting but Singh's firm no to Gill made it amply clear that he was not impressed by the Sports Minister's apparent attempt to insulate his Ministry from the mounting criticism of the way the Games have been handled so far.

Prime Minister Singh was forced to step in once again and hold a review meeting yesterday on the CWG preparations at his residence in which Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Delhi Lt-Governor Tejendra Khanna besides Gill were present.

Top officials, including Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, Home Secretary G K Pillai and National Security Adviser Shivshanker Menon were also there. He had held a similar review meeting last month.

In the meeting today, the Prime Minister made it clear to Gill that any briefing was totally unnecessary since the matter had already been discussed at length yesterday. Gill, who had come armed with a file with details of the preparations, sought to raise the matter at the end of the Cabinet meeting.

The Prime Minister's concern over shoddy preparations, sources said, was evident in yesterday's meeting when he literally threw up his arms in exasperation over the inability of those in charge to tackle even minor issues related to housekeeping. "What is the problem?" he is said to have asked those present, including Gill. "He was concerned after the footbridge collapse and the criticism about the Games village," a source present at the meeting said.

The Prime Minister, though, soon got down to methodically identifying the problems at the meeting. To overcome the issue of adequately experienced and qualified staffers at the Games village who were able to conform to international standards, it was decided to source supervisers from five-star hotels from different parts of the country.

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