Delhi Commonwealth Games: A super fiasco in making (Part I)

China demonstrated its technological and organizational prowess by the stunning spectacle that Beijing Olympics’2008. It was the testimony of China coming to age, a final seal of global approval to China. India has a similar opportunity staging the Common wealth Games in 2010, 12 months now on. However, from the looks of it, the Indian effort will probably be borne out in ignominy, embarrassment and chagrin on the world stage. CAG reported large scale under-preparedness and financial mismanagement in the CWG projects.

Earlier coverages in this blog:

http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/03/delhis-commonwealth-tamasha.html

http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/03/delhi-running-out-of-time-on.html

Key Games projects badly delayed: CAG
Projects including the main stadium design, games venues, infrastructure for conducting the sports and major city upgrade plans are running so much behind schedule that there’s a real threat of India’s showpiece games turning into a non event. In at least 13 of the 19 sporting venues, the work shortfall is between 25% to 50%. 9 out of 16 major ongoing city infrastructure projects are at high risk of failing deadline with work shortfall of 55% to 97%. All 16 running late infrastructure projects are anyways running super late.This means all these projects would either miss the deadlines or compromise on quality in haste to finish on time.

6 projects have been shelved completely given the helplessness in terms of time schedules and hopelessness in the situation delinking them from the games. CAG says the first 3 projecst were critical to the Games and would impact traffic management during the event.

1. Shastri Park tunnel corridor connecting east Delhi to north and northeast

2 Elevated east-west corridor from east Delhi to CP

3 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg flyover linking IG stadium

4 Masoodpur corridor upgrade & Mahipalpur tunnel

5 SP Mukherjee Marg corridor for easing Old Delhi railway station traffic

6 Signal-free right turn at JB Tito Marg-Siri Fort Road

Among the infrastructure projects shelved due to horrible delays, CAG says the east-west corridor, BSZ Marg flyover and the Shastri Park tunnel were critical for the Games on account of their location and that the decision to delink them would have adverse traffic management implications.

Metro constructions in Delhi have already shown cracks (literally and figuratively under the haste of meeting CWG deadlines).