Fun, games, & plenty of foul play at SAI

In the latest 90-page audit report for year 2002-03, the auditors noted how they found records missing for several significant heads of accounts listed both as the assets as well as liabilities of the SAI (see graphic). As a society, the auditors found, the SAI did not even hold their Annual General Meetings and in some SAI centres, the staff treated the auditors with open ‘‘hostility.’’

General criticism apart, the reports reveal several shocking specifics, which speak volumes about what ails the country’s premier sports administrative body. Some audit objections:

• SAI had been paying its foreign coaches in foreign currency which it purchased from the open market, without paying tax, thus violating the norms of the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

• Some premier SAI institutes like the Talkatora Swimming Pool had been running for years without the licence being renewed. At the Indira Gandhi Stadium, the auditors found a 50% rent concession had been allowed for daily rental on the reccomendation of the staff of the Sports Minister.

• The 2001-02 report contains a list of people who had overstayed in the flats allotted to them in the Khel Gaon complex in New Delhi. There is an amount of Rs 4.76 lakhs due from such allotees.

• In a serious lapse in the Netaji Subhash Southern Centre, Bangalore, the auditors found that a bulk of the medicines procured for athletes had expired even before they had been purchased and several medicines were on the Government’s banned list. A lengthy list of such medicines is contained in the report.

• The auditors found several incomplete projects while examining the accounts of SAI’s centres in Kolkata. One project mentioned is the construction of a 50-bedded boys hostel; another, the construction of a swimming pool.

Questioned about these lapses, SAI’s present Director General, Ratan Watal said that following discussions with the PMO, a ‘‘financial revamp’’ of the SAI was in the offing and that another round of scrutiny of accounts would be undertaken by an independent body.