After increasing the Commonwealth Games budget two folds to Rs 1620 crore last week, the government has now decided to take control of the Games funds into its own hands, rather than leaving it to the Suresh Kalmadi-led Organising Committee (OC).

 The Cabinet recently decided to set up a three-member sub-committee, comprising of M Ramachandran, urban development secretary, Sindhushree Khullar, sports secretary and Vilasini Ramachandran, who is additional secretary (expenditure department) with the finance ministry, to take charge of the finances. All requests for funds will now be “screened” by the three officials, who are also the Indian government’s representatives on the OC’s Executive Board chaired by Kalmadi.

 “The sub-committee on finance has not been notified yet and will be constituted soon. The idea was mooted in the Cabinet note which was also approved by the Cabinet recently as the financing was doubled,” M Ramachandran told The Indian Express.

 “The idea behind the formation of this committee was to ensure a screening level before the proposal reaches the Executive Board. It is a guarantee mechanism to ensure that expenditure is undertaken according to the guidelines laid down. All the expenditure proposals will have to be routed through this committee regardless of the expenditure involved,” he added.

 The urban development minister, S Jaipal Reddy, already heads the Group of Ministers (GoM) for the Commonwealth Games.

The development comes after the government, in a Cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, announced it would pump in more money into the Commonwealth Games, increasing the budget — earlier Rs 767 crore — by over 100 per cent. While the official line is that the sub-committee will help the board take decisions quickly, sources say the move will further clip Kalmadi’s wings.

... contd.