Games makeover is a Rs 66,550 cr bomb

The capital may wear the look of a bombed-out city but on paper, it has got a facelift worth Rs 66,550 crore for the Commonwealth Games - with the taxpayers picking up a major part of the tab.

Ace shooter Abhinav Bindra and CWG OC chief Suresh Kalmadi unveil Games uniforms
Delhi's beautification makes up for the bulk of the total expenses on the Games - Rs 70,608 crore. That is 114 times more than the estimated original price tag of the Games, and four times what the government spends on the National Rural Health Mission every year.

The startling figures, which appear in Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and The Commonwealth Games (HarperCollins India) by Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta, can only cause further embarrassment to the Sheila Dikshit government, which has been on a taxation spree on the pretext of the Games.

"Such an escalation is unheard of in the history of world sport," says Majumdar, a sports historian and an adjunct professor at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. "These figures aren't polemic, but empirically based on facts," he adds.

Full report here India Today