PM responsible for CWG mess: Former mayor

Panaji: Arti Mehra, former Delhi mayor, blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) organisational fiasco.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arti Mehra, who was mayor of the national capital from 2007 to 2009, told reporters on Sunday that early in her tenure she had written to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to create a single window system for clearing all files related to the CWG in order to ensure that all Games related works and files were properly monitored and cleared on time.

"For eight years the Congress government had slept over the project works. When I became mayor in 2007, I wrote to the prime minister to create a single window system to ensure that work ensued at a proper pace. The single window system was installed much later, only after the damage was done," said Mehra, who is visiting Goa as a national secretary in charge of the state's affairs.

"The CWG is nothing but a Rs 87,000 crore scam. The hungama surrounding the Games is a shame to the pride of India," she said.

Allegations of money laundering against chairman of the CWG Organising Committee Suresh Kamadi and shoddy, sub-standard infrastructure has plunged the 2010 CWG, which will be held in Delhi from October 3 to 14, into controversy. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has already assured that those guilty of corruption would not be spared after the mega sports event is over.

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