'Budget misquoted to favour Swiss Timing in TSR contract'

New Delhi, Jul 3 (PTI) Two top Indian officials in the
CWG Organising Committee (OC) misquoted the budget for Timing
Scoring and Results (TSR) system and ignored lower bid by
another firm to award the contract to the Swiss firm Omega,
the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been informed.
Bharat Prasad, who joined OC in July 2008 as Deputy
Director General (Finance) and has been named by CBI as a
witness in the TSR scam case, in his statement has explained
how the funds were misappropriated by V K Verma and Lalit
Bhanot causing huge loss to the exchequer.
The total budget sanctioned for TSR was Rs 92.30 crore
only of which Rs 7 crore was meant for purchase of legacy
items like camera's and swimming equipments to be retained by
venue owners, the 62-year-old Prasad said.
However, former Director General of OC, V K Verma told
the Executive Board that the budget for TSR was Rs 109.23
crore and the Rs 7 crore was not utilised for the purpose it
was meant for.
"The total budget for TSR was Rs 92.30 crore only. It
was seen from the minutes of meeting that DG while informing
the OC Executive Board about the details of the processing of
the commercial and sponsorship bids of Swiss Timing has
indicated the budget for TSR to be Rs 109.23 crore which is
false," Prasad said in his statement.
"Grant for TSR included Rs 7 crore for procurement of
legacy items to be retained by venue owners. However, OC did
not go for these purchases nor the grant of Rs 7 crore was
returned," Prasad said.
Secretary General of the OC, Bhanot went ahead to
execute the contract for TSR with Swiss Timing at Rs 115.33
crore ignoring other substantially lower bids that caused a
huge losses to the public exchequer, he said.
"The bid price from Swiss Timing for TSR came out to
be Rs 115.33 crore and for other Spanish firm MSL it was 90.15
crore. Moreover, MSL had offered Games Management Systems free
in its bids.
"Further, the price quoted by MSL is inclusive of all
taxes wheres the price quoted by the Swiss firm was exclusive
of all taxes which include service tax at rate of 10.3 per
cent and TDS at 20 per cent," he said.