Nigeria Content Online

An
Indian court on Tuesday ordered that the former chief organiser of the
Delhi Commonwealth Games (CWG) be kept in police custody. This followed
on the heels of a crackdown on businesses and government officials in a
string of corruption cases to hit the emerging global giant.

Federal police
Monday arrested Suresh Kalmadi, a senior lawmaker who has been
suspended from the ruling Congress party, charged with cheating in
tenders for timing equipment worth millions of dollars in the October
sporting event. Police will hold him for eight days from Tuesday.

The case is one of
several high-profile corruption scandals to strain the Congress
party-led government and spark protests in the Indian capital against
what is seen as a culture of near impunity for the country’s elite.

In a separate case,
a court deferred a decision on whether to grant bail to five executives
charged with manipulating the sale of telecoms licences in collusion
with senior officials in the ruling coalition.

New Delhi may have
been deprived up to $39 billion in lost revenue due to the flawed
awarding of second-generation mobile telecoms licences, a state auditor
has said.

Mr Kalmadi, who has
become a pantomime villain in the Indian media, had a sandal thrown at
him as he made his way to a court Tuesday. He has denied any wrongdoing
and his lawyer called the arrest “illegal.” “The accused person entered
into a criminal conspiracy to cheat the government of India in the
matter of awarding contracts for timings, scoring and results system to
be acquired for the CWG, Delhi 2010,” V.K. Sharma, a federal police
lawyer for the prosecution, told the court Tuesday.

The $6 billion
event was billed as India’s answer to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but
descended into rows over leaking stadiums, filthy athletes’ rooms and
corruption scandals.

Mr Kalmadi’s aides
formed a tight phalanx around the lawmaker from the western city of
Pune as he walked out of the court and the judge sat down to write the
order. A female aide shouted to him: “God is with us.” Rows of police
armed with batons roped a path for Mr Kalmadi to come in and out of the
courtroom.

Months of
relentless headlines about corruption scandals and a vocal political
opposition have roiled the government, rattled investors and put the
brakes on ambitious economic reforms in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s
second term.

The Congress party
suspended Suresh Kalmadi Monday after he was charged with favouring a
Swiss firm to provide 1.4 billion rupees ($31.6 million) worth of
timing equipment to the Games.

Mr Kalmadi, who was
booed at the Games’ opening ceremony in front of a global TV audience
in October, had his constituency office in Pune vandalised by a gang of
angry youths Monday night.

On Tuesday, onlookers shouted a mix of support and abuse as Mr Kalmadi emerged from the court.

Telecoms case

In an adjacent
courtroom, former telecoms minister, Andimuthu Raja, was seen slumped
over a table as a case over the sale of telecoms licences and spectrum
continued Tuesday.

Mr Raja, along with
executives from telecoms firms and the daughter of the leader of a
regional party that is a key government ally, have been charged in the
telecoms licence case.

In another
courtroom, a Delhi high court judge deferred a hearing on the bail
applications of senior officials from Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani
(ADA) Group and the Indian joint ventures of Norway’s Telenor and the
UAE’s Etisalat until Friday at the earliest.

Their bail plea was
rejected by a lower court last week after federal police said the
executives could abscond or try to influence witnesses. They will be
held in jail pending the trial or until they are granted bail. All
those on trial in the telecoms case deny wrongdoing.

Federal police
Monday added more names to their charge sheet in the telecoms case,
including the lawmaker daughter of the chief minister of Tamil Nadu
state. She was accused of taking bribes routed via a TV channel owned
by her family.

The case could
potentially threaten Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ruling coalition
and provoke a popular backlash in ongoing state elections, including in
Tamil Nadu, where Congress is allied to the ruling Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (DMK) party.

The DMK threatened
to pull ministers from the coalition if members of the chief minister’s
family were charged, according to media reports.

The DMK will meet
in the state capital, Chennai, on Wednesday to discuss their coalition
with the Congress party, a spokesman for the party told the NDTV news
channel.

The DMK had also
threatened to withdraw from the government in March in a row over
seat-sharing arrangements in the Tamil Nadu election, for which results
are out on May 13.

However, analysts question whether the DMK would act on such a
threat, given that it needs Congress’s clout in the state as much as
Congress needs the DMK’s 18 seats to maintain its federal majority.
Congress could also look to other smaller parties to prop up its
coalition.