New Delhi: The Indian government has launched an official investigation into allegations of corruption and mismanagement during the preparations for the Delhi Commonwealth Games, reports said on Saturday.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) national watchdog ordered the probe into various Games-related projects a day after Thursday's closing ceremony, the Press Trust of India said.
"The audit work for the Commonwealth Games is related to work payments, contracts and leasing of sports equipment among others," the official news agency said.
A high-powered panel of investigators headed by a former chief of the CAG will submit its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by January.
Responsibility
The panel will look into "the organisation and conduct of the Games, fix responsibility for the alleged irregularities and also prepare a dossier on the lessons learnt for future events," The Indian Express newspaper said.
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, one of the driving spirits behind the frantic last-minute preparations for the Games, warned those found guilty would be punished.
"The prime minister has said that whatever has gone wrong will be dealt with severely and eventually [those involved in] corruption will not get away [with it]," she said.
"There is a mystery about tickets. People said stadiums were empty but tickets were not available and so what happened?" she said.
The October 3-14 event was the costliest Commonwealth Games in history, with an initial organising budget of $2 billion (Dh7.34 billion) that was estimated to have swollen to at least three times that size.
The soaring costs and highly publicised construction delays fuelled intense criticism of the Games organising committee, in particular its chairman Suresh Kalmadi.
Other reports said federal revenue authorities will separately probe charges of financial wrongdoing while the Central Bureau of Investigation will scrutinise tenders handed out by Kalmadi's team to buy sports equipment.
An Indian anti-corruption body in August reported a plethora of problems with construction work, including the use of poor-quality materials and dubious contracts.
The allegations also sparked two days of heated debate in parliament in August.
In a poll published Saturday in the Times of India, 86 per cent of respondents said the corruption charges should be fully investigated and the guilty brought to book.
