PMO neither denies, nor confirms contents of Mani letters on CWG

New Delhi: The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) today neither denied nor confirmed the contents of the communication between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar regarding the corruption scandal in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) and asked the public to draw “appropriate conclusions”. However, the Prime Minister has asked the Sports Ministry to provide relevant details in this regard. A statement, issued by the PMO, said the letters written by Mr Aiyar were in public domain and the statement by the Prime Minister during his interaction with senior editors on June 29 may be seen in the context of the letters. “The letters written by Mani Shankar Aiyar are in the public domain. The statement made by the Prime Minister in his interaction with the editors of the newspapers on June 29 may be seen in context of the contents of the letters. The public may like to draw appropriate conclusions.”, the PMO statement said. The Prime Minister had told the senior editors during his interaction that Mr Aiyar had written to him purely on ideological grounds and had not mentioned any wrongdoings. However, the letters got by an RTI activist and aired by a TV Channel last night and published in a daily today, said Mr Aiyar had in his letters clearly mentioned about the financial bunglings in the CWG. A letter written by Mr Aiyar to the Prime Minister on March 9, 2006, said, “I write to seek a meeting with you to discuss gargantuan gap between expenditure projections given in 2003 and the present projected figures. On organisation of the games, the figure has been ramped up from Rs 250 crore to Rs 900 crore.” Another letter written on October 25, 2007, directly targeted former CWG Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi saying, “I grow increasingly alarmed at the profligacy of the CWG OC Chairman.” The letters were written by Mr Aiyar over a span of two years, beginning 2006.