Several hundred participants ran from Dhyan Chand Stadium to the head office of the Games organising committee at Jantar Mantar.

 

BJP leader Vijay Goel said: "It [the run] is to make the Government and organising committee complete the projects in time.

 

"When China organised the Olympics at Beijing it boosted their image globally.

 

"Now our prestige is at stake but the central Government, the state Government and the sports authority are callous about it."

 

It followed a claim last week by Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the leader of the BJP in the Delhi Assembly and a senior vice-president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), that the Government was responsible for the "inordinate delays" in building the facilities and infrastructure necessary to stage next year's Games and were now "mindlessly" spending money on the project to make up for lost time. 

 

Goel, who also took part in the run, said: "There has been mass corruption in Commonwealth Games funds as suggested by the unaudited increase in the budget of various projects.

 

"This run is to stop that.

 

"We demand that the financial details be put on a website to bring transparency.

 

"The Government should also present a white paper to give the status of various projects and fix responsibility for delays in them."

 

Chetan Chauhan, a former cricketer who played 40 tests for India, scoring more than 2,000 runs, who is now a senior member of the BJP, also took part in the run.

 

He said: "Though the preparations for the Games have started but it is not up to the mark.

 

"There is still lot of pending work, which needs to get completed on time like the stadia, roads and the Games Village are still not built yet.

 

"There is no cooperation between the authorities and the different organising committees and the State and the Central Government."

 

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]

 

 

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