The furniture rate list for the office of former Commonwealth Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi reads like a member of a royal family buying for himself discernible items to match his status and whims. In the case of Mr Kalmadi though, it was public money that was spent on these items that could safely be called “luxury”.
Sample these: Side-tables costing `1.25 lakh each, a meeting table was bought at `2.26 lakh, one leather chair alone cost `73,000 and each sofa set (three-seater) came at `1.34 lakh. The list goes on.
The CBI probe into various contracts related to the CWG might have brought out serious lapses in terms of monitoring of quality of different items, but it seems Mr Kalmadi and his confidants were clear about the last detail when it came to purchasing items for their offices. Even so, the CBI is still probing whether these rates were actual or inflated.
Documents accessed by this newspaper reveal that a meeting table purchased for the chamber of chairman in the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) building located in the Qutub Institutional Area was worth `2.26 lakh. Besides, each arm chair purchased for his chamber cost `80,000.
Sources in the probe agency said, “These were furniture purchased for Kalmadi and other top officials of the Olympic Association in the IOA building. When they shifted to the new OC office located near Jantar Mantar, some of the furniture were brought to the new building while the remaining were left behind. The Organising Committee recently handed over furniture, worth `1.88 crore, to the IOA office-bearers.”