Minutes after the news about Suresh Kalmadi’s arrest came and the Bharatiya Janata Party reacted to it saying that it was a delayed action, Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said: “UPA has let the law take its own course (in corruption cases)”. We can’t find words to express how reassured and grateful we feel for the UPA to indeed “let” the law take its own course. For quite a few months, it seemed, the law had been blinded enough to miss its course. While we thank Mr Tewari for sharing the insight, we beg to make a few humble submissions to her majesty, the UPA.

Our first submission is the same as the opposition’s. It came too late in the day. More than a year before the CWG, the Controller and Auditor General of India (CAG) forewarned about the dubious deals of Kalmadi and his henchmen. A few months ahead of the games, even a dysfunctional CVC screamed out that price bids had been tampered with, ineligible agencies given works and inferior workmanship certified as excellent. A post-games inquiry by retired bureaucrat V K Shunglu said Kalmadi ran the organizing committee like a private club, splurging public money for private gains. Had your majesty “let” the law to take its course at the right time, thousands of crore of rupees could have been saved. We may send Kalmadi into the Tihar now, but the money is lost.

All the three inquiries have indicted the Delhi government, various civic agencies like DDA, MCD, PWD, NDMC, CPWD, RITES, union ministries of urban development and sports and a high-powered committee of senior bureaucrats of the union government which gave the final nod to all financial deals, too. Our second submission, therefore, is that the law should be “let” to catch up with those powerful individuals.

Our third submission is for the sports and law ministries to do some homework first. For months we were told Kalmadi couldn’t be sacked as chairman of game’s organizing committee, it being a society. In January this year, the attorney general said he could be, because Kalmadi became chairman even before the society was registered, and he was. Now, a notice has been sent to the Indian Olympic Association asking it to sack Kalmadi as its president, with a threat from Ajay Maken, our honourable sports minister, that he “will” write to the attorney general again and “take action on our own”.

Our fourth and last submission is to request your majesty to revisit laws governing our national sports bodies and make suitable changes to save sports from many more Kalmadis running amok.