New Delhi, Feb 6 (PTI) Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday recalled his run-ins with CWG Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi during his stint as the sports minister and said the 2010 Commonwealth Games eventually ended in a "national shame".

Aiyar made the remarks at the launch of his book, titled "A Maverick in Politics", published by Juggernaut.

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The Congress leader narrated his journey in politics at the event, attended by the likes of former vice-president Hamid Ansari, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, several MPs, former MPs and present and past diplomats.

Aiyar acknowledged that it was former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who brought him into politics from the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), but it was Sonia Gandhi who enabled him to rise up the political ladder, before he "fell off it".

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In conversation with senior journalist Vir Sanghvi, Aiyar recounted his stints as a minister handling the portfolios of petroleum and natural gas, panchayati raj, youth affairs and sports and development of northeastern region at various points in time during the UPA-I rule.

Talking about his stint as the sports minister from January 2006 to April 2008, Aiyar conceded that he was not very happy at the petroleum and natural gas portfolio being taken away from him and he being shifted to the youth affairs and sports ministry.

"I was so against being a sport-hosting nation without becoming a sporting nation that I asked for leave (when the Asian Games took place).... I refused to go for the Asian Games and I refused to watch it on television," he said of the time when he was a diplomat.

On taking over as the sports minister, Aiyar said he discovered that he was not going to be organising the Commonwealth Games.

"All sports federations are under the Indian Olympic Association. They were all beholden to the IOA. All federations were headed by politicians who just sat with their potbellies -- the federations were very rich -- and had a good time," he said, adding that there was no effort on their part to discover talent and nurture it.

"Within minutes of me reaching my office in Shastri Bhawan (as the sports minister), two principal assistants to Suresh Kalmadi came to see me and in language that was only fit for the bathrooms in the Doon School, they cursed Suresh Kalmadi. Then my secretary started telling me that the problem with the Commonwealth Games is that the ministry is required to release thousands of crores of rupees to the organising committee, but the organising committee is refusing to give us what are called utilisation certificates (UCs), which are the basis of all babudom," he said.

These UCs are needed before the release of the next instalment, he added.

"I tried to contact my predecessors. Prithviraj Chavan came up to me in the Central Hall of Parliament and said, 'if you do not get the UCs out of Kalmadi, you are in deep trouble'. I said you were the minister before me, why didn't you get the UCs out of him?" Aiyar said.

Chavan cited Maharashtra's politics and said he could not insist, Aiyar added.

The former Union minister said he convened a meeting that was attended by Kalmadi, who was adamant that he would not give a UC.

"Then I said to him, 'Suresh, I have no desire to share a cell with you in Tihar Jail' and added, 'If I don't get into Tihar Jail, I don't want to bring a chocolate cake to you in prison'," Aiyar recalled.

Kalmadi went straight to then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and told her that Aiyar had made this remark in front of his subordinates, the former sports minister said.

"She asked me if I had said so. I was astonished that she knew, so I looked at her, not knowing how exactly will she react, and then she started giggling. So I thought it was alright," Aiyar said.

Aiyar said he was to go to Melbourne to accept the baton as the representative of the host nation from the previous host nation, but he refused to go as he did not want to be in the company of people "who were diddling the government of India".

"Of course, it ended in a sad story, with Mr Kalmadi spending 10 months in Tihar," he said, adding, "I did not have to share a cell with him and I have to confess, I did not take a chocolate cake to him."

Aiyar also went on to narrate how the empowered group of ministers nudged him to release the next instalment to Kalmadi but he refused as it was against the rules, without getting a UC.

"I was being asked to release the money, so I wrote to the prime minister a strictly secret letter that this is happening and very unfortunately, that letter was discovered by TV years after I ceased being a minister and was being displayed on screen, in which I was complaining about what was happening and financial impropriety," Aiyar said.

He said his secretary did succeed in securing some kind of a UC and that became a "cover for us".

"But because there was misuse, eventually, all of it came out and we had the Commonwealth Games as a national shame. I left the country, not wanting to be here when the games took place. I was in England and the newspapers there were full of what we were doing in India in the Commonwealth Games. It was such a disgrace," he said.

Aiyar pointed out that the government did eventually remove Kalmadi from his post.

It allowed him to complete the exercise but almost immediately thereafter, he and four of his principal collaborators were put into jail for a long time, Aiyar recalled.

Asked if all this could have been stopped before it happened, he said, "Well, that was my grouse but it was not the government's grouse. I am very glad that as a result of my disputes With Kalmadi, I was removed from the job about a year and a half before the games took place. So ultimately, I did not have a hand in the disgrace," he said.

Aiyar also talked about his ties with Sonia Gandhi and how she had a hand in getting him inducted as a cabinet minister in UPA I.

"I thought I should be reporting to her on what I was doing (as a minister) but I very quickly discovered that she wanted me to report to the prime minister and not to her," he said.

"After Rajiv passed away, she cast her hand on my shoulder. If she had not been there, all the successes I talked about would not have been possible. So it was Rajiv who brought me into politics, who was really kind to me as a civil servant, and subsequently, Sonia enabled me to rise on the political ladder, before I fell off it," he said.

In the book, Aiyar talks about his early days in politics, navigating through the P V Narasimha Rao years, his time as a minister in UPA I, his Rajya Sabha term and then his "decline...fade out...fall".

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)