cwg; students cheated says LK Advani

20 Sept 2010

CWG: STUDENTS CHEATED, SAYS ADVANI

From Our Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI: The Commonwealth Games village inaugurated last week was to be converted later into a Delhi University students' hostel, but the bureaucrats sabotaged it to secure these posh and luxurious apartments for themselves after the Games. 

This has been brought out by Bhartiya Janata Party veteran leader Lal Krishna Advani in his latest blog, donning the hat of an investigative journalist. 

Shortly after India bagged in 2003 to host the Games, then Lt Governor of Delhi wrote to the then NDA Government recommending that the accommodation that was to be constructed for the athletes participating in the Commonwealth Games should be of a nature so that it could be later used as a hostel for the Delhi University. 

"The Vajpayee Government readily agreed to the proposal. But later on, after the change of Government in New Delhi in 2004, officials interested in securing posh apartments for themselves after the Games were over, had different ideas," says Advani.

He produces in support a letter of September 14, 2004, addressed to Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Deepak Nayyar by Vijai Kapoor, then no longer the Lt. Governor. The letter reads: 

"I had succeeded in obtaining the approval of the then Union Council of Minister that the Games Village to be built near Akshardham for the Commonwealth Games 2010 would, after the Games, be handed over to Delhi University for use as a hostel for its students.  I hear that some persons, obviously not very committed to the cause of our youth, have since been trying to have the decision reversed.  

"With a view to obviating such a reversal I had asked the Delhi Development Authority to put it down as a primary parameter in the design competition for the Village that, after the Games, it would be used as a University hostel.  Further developments in the matter you should closely watch.  The clout of the University, and of you personally, will have to be used to ensure that a salutary decision taken by the previous Council of Ministers is now not reversed."

Obviously, Advani says the Vice-Chancellor could not succeed in preventing the attempts to have the ‘salutary decision’ of the NDA Government changed.

"Suresh Kalmadi (chairman of Games organising committee) and his associates may be happy, but how would Delhi University students feel about all this? Would they not feel cheated," asks Advani.

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