Fennell’s Letter Causes Stir, Ministers to be Responsible for 2010 Work

Spurred into action by Commonwealth Games Federation chief Michael Fennell’s letter to the Prime Minister expressing concern about Delhi’s preparedness for the October 2010 event, chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Wednesday divided the 97 Games projects being executed by various government departments and civic agencies for monitoring. The maximum number, 37 of these projects are being executed by the PWD.

The monitoring model, however, has already raised hackles with ministers raising concern about others ‘‘interfering’’ in their work. ‘‘The chief minister has in any case maintained that Delhi government projects are on time. And the way things stand; ministers are already in charge of projects that their departments are implementing.

Moreover, the real problem is with MCD projects and unless the transfer of powers happens, they will not let us supervise,’’ said a source.

All ministers other than health minister Kiran Walia will supervise six PWD projects, the minister concerned is Rajkumar Chauhan and six MCD projects each. Walia has been assigned seven PWD projects and none of MCD. The NDMC projects have been divided between Kiran walia and finance minister A K Walia while former transport minister Haroon Yusuf has been made in-charge of all transport projects.

Labour minister Mangatram Singhal is in charge of all power projects, a department which is under the chief minister. Delhi Jal Board will now be answerable to Rajkumar Chauhan and Arvinder Singh Lovely for Commonwealth projects. Lovely is also in-charge of the fire department projects.

The only minister who seems to have escaped the danger of ‘‘interference’’ from others is health minister Kiran Walia who continues to be in charge of all health projects.

Officials also say that the new model may end up ensuring that senior officials waste much more time in meetings and arranging visits for the ‘‘superintending minister’’ than is conducive for the project.

Though it was not on the agenda of Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Fennell’s letter had taken up most of the time of that meeting. Sources say when the CM had expressed concern about the pace of projects and the way monitoring was being done, a senior minister had said: ‘‘None of your ministers has any work’’, which is where the idea of assigning Games projects to individual ministers stemmed from.