L-G miffed with Sheila taking credit for Village turnaround-14/10/10

L-G miffed with Sheila taking credit for Village turnaround

Abantika Ghosh, TNN, Oct 14, 2010, 12.46am IST

NEW DELHI: The curtains are not yet down on the Commonwealth Games but the heartburn has already begun. Displaying his annoyance with Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit cornering all the credit for cleaning up the Games Village — which had been dubbed 'unlivable' by several countries — in the last one week, Delhi's lieutenant governor Tejender Khanna has written to PM Manmohan Singh protesting the "unfair and factually incorrect" projection of this "turnaround miracle."

Khanna said the claim that this turnaround "was achieved within a few days by one single agency 'taking over' the management of the Games Village is, in my perception, unfair, factually incorrect and demoralizing for the personnel of all the other agencies who have been working earnestly as a team to expeditiously bridge the gaps that were noticed."

The letter is dated October 7, a day after TOI carried an interview of the chief minister where she had talked about how she was given "charge" of the Village at the last minute and turned things around in four days, while holding the DDA — of which the L-G is the chairman — and Games OC guilty of "carelessness".

L-G takes credit for rebuilding FOB

The L-G, in his letter to the PM, has said that the "additional staff provided under CM's directions by MCD and NDMC have been basically deployed for outside cleaning of the landscape area in the residential zone of the Village and for some cleaning by the NDMC staff in the common areas of towers like lifts and staircases. None of them have, however, been involved in the deep cleaning of washrooms, etc."

Khanna added, "I had visited the Village along with the other project sites of the DDA on 29 August, 2010 for over four hours and sent a detailed communication on 31 August 2010 to the Hon'ble Union UD minister Shri Jaipal Reddy enclosing my observations and also actions required to be taken by various agencies." His letter talks about how he had stressed the need for OC to establish custodial control over all flats and deployment of staff for housekeeping.

"During that visit when Lt Gen Ashok Kapoor of OC, in charge of the Games Village, had mentioned to me that he did not have proper staff to take charge of the keys of the flats of different towers, I immediately arranged 70 junior commissioned officers who had been selected by Raj Niwas... to be deployed two per tower in the Games Village under OC's supervision. Surprisingly the OC deployed their outsourced housekeeping staff only w.e.f. 15 September 2010 through two agencies namely ISS and Kalpataru and did not take any corrective action."

Khanna has taken credit for requisitioning the Army's help to build the temporary bridge near Jawaharlal Nehri Stadium after the foot-overbridge collapsed. While the CM, in her interview had said that the decision to post Delhi government officers at Games venues had been her own, Khanna says the decision was actually taken at a meeting chaired by him at the Village on September 20 at the suggestion of the chief secretary.

Admitting that after the towers had been furnished by ITDC, the "state of cleanliness of rooms and particularly the washrooms was adversely impacted", he has said that even after they were handed over the rooms, the OC "did not take proper custodial responsibility thereof".

The letter talks about the procedural hassles that had caused wastage of much time before actual construction of the Village could begin, and also DDA's "bailout" of developers Emaar-MGF that is described as an "out-of-the-box decision taken by DDA with the participation of the Union secretary for urban development."

The letter also outlines the role of Raj Niwas at the instance of the OC, in deploying Metro Waste Handling Agency and the Global Excellence Lions Group for keeping the Games Village clean. He also points out that it was during meetings at Raj Niwas that decisons on electronic surveillance, the secure communication network TETRA and the detailed transportation, parking and traffic