By IANS,
New Delhi: The Congress said Wednesday that it had not given a clean chit to anyone in relation to the controversies surrounding the Commonwealth Games projects and the regulatory bodies should be allowed to do their work unhindered.
“We have not given a clean or unclean chit to anybody. I don’t think we are the authority to do that,” Congress spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters here in reposnse to questions on the subject.
Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed had Tuesday come out in strong defence of party ministers and the Delhi chief minister while asserting that Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi was not representing the party on the panel.
Ahmed had said that Sports Minister M.S. Gill, Urban Development Minister S. Jaipal Reddy and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit were leaders of “impeccable integrity”.
Tewari said the regulatory agencies should be allowed to play their role and the party was not making any value judgement.
“Let regulatory bodies play their role. At the same time, preparations for holding the Games successfully should go on,” he added.
He said if the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) or the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had made any preliminary conclusions in relation to the Games preparations, it was for the concerned authorities to respond to this.
Asked if party general secretary Rahul Gandhi should be associated with the games in the way his father Rajiv Gandhi was associated with the 1982 Asian Games as a young Congress leader, Tewari said the conditions were different.
To a question about the party not adopting the same yardstick for Kalmadi as it had applied to some of its ministers earlier, Tewari said there was difference between people who were holding posts only as nominees of the party and those who were occupying positions due to other factors and reasons.
Without naming Kalmadi, he said federation chiefs were elected by their members who have the powers to decide about their continuation.
Tiwari said the party was not making any value judgements. “There are institutions to do that who will do their work without fear or favour,” he said.
Answering queries about the need for an investigative agency to probe allegations of corruption and doctoring of e-mails, he said the CAG had an inherent investigative mechanism.
He said a postmortem about the damage to the country’s image from allegations of wrongdoing in the Games preparations can be done after the event.
“Everybody needs to put their best foot forward,” Tewari maintained.