The New Delhi Commonwealth Games were rocked by fresh scandal with reports yesterday alleging that building quality certificates had been faked as costs for the 12-day event ballooned.
With barely two months left to go before the opening of the Commonwealth Games in October, a flood of allegations of rampant corruption are emerging involving the sporting extravaganza.
"Fake certificates were routinely issued to pass substandard work and material," an unnamed official of the Central Vigilance Commission, a government watchdog body, was quoted as saying by the Times of India.
Other certificates were "suspect," he said.
"We have not yet been able to gauge the financial implication but it is certain to have led to very big gains for vendors and contractors," he said.
Troubles for the organisers mounted yesterday as India's cash-rich cricket board rejected their appeal for a grant of one billion rupees ($22 million) to offset cost overruns, the sporting body said.
The event involving 71 nations is already the costliest Commonwealth Games in history, with an infrastructure and organising budget of two billion dollars, although unofficial estimates say the price will be at least triple.
Sports Minister M.S. Gill told parliament on Friday that the cost of organising the event had risen 17.5 times since the bid was made in 2003.
Indian media also reported a separate probe by Indian revenue authorities into allegations of irregular payouts by Games organisers to a Britain-based firm.
The Hindustan Times and other local media said the investigations were launched following a request from British authorities.
The opposition is demanding a judicial probe into allegations of corruption in construction of the Games and has raised fears poor building standards could affect the safety of athletes.
Opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Goel said that "forging and fudging of various quality and safety checks has widely thrown open the possibility of mishaps, blackouts and accidents."
The corruption charges come with Delhi still looking like a giant construction site, with mounds of debris surrounding dug-up roads and walkways across the city as work goes on round-the-clock to get the capital ready.
The monsoon rains drenching the city are making it even harder for work crews while the ground surrounding the complex being built to house athletes is still a sea of mud.
The Games were seen as a chance to spotlight India's emerging economic superpower status after success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But now there is widespread scepticism that all the infrastructure will be ready in time with critics deriding the preparations as "shambolic."