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The president of the Indian Olympic Association, PT Usha, has denied any bias on the part of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) towards the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.
Usha responded with 61 pages on October 8 to the CAG’s notice from previous month pointing out that IOA had
The track and field legend responded by accusing the previous administration of having a “flawed” approach, even though she acknowledged that the CAG’s “assumption does not hold good.” Additionally, she has asked the auditors to “settle” the issue.
A copy of the original contract, signed in 2022, and the internal correspondence between International Olympic Committee, IOA, and RIL executives over the renegotiation of the Rs 35-crore transaction are included in her response.
The IOA called for bids in July 2022 to construct a “hospitality lounge” near the Paris Games, where India could advocate for the country’s right to host the Olympics in 2036, among other things.
According to documents that Usha included with her response, Reliance was awarded the contract, which was signed by former Secretary General Rajiv Mehta on behalf of the IOA and went into effect in July 2022.
Reliance would pay Rs 35 crore in installments throughout the course of the six-year agreement, from 2022 to 2028. According to the pact, Reliance would become the IOA’s “principal sponsor” and receive “exclusive naming rights” to the India House in exchange.
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“No NOC (National Olympic Committee) sponsor branding can be visible from the outside of your NOC House,” Usha claims she wrote in an email in June 2023. Usha has included a copy of the correspondence in her response. As stipulated in the original deal, Reliance was unable to benefit from the exclusive name rights for the India House due to the IOC’s ruling.
The email also said that “in addition to the India House rights, such additional sponsors shall be granted entitlements of Associate Sponsor of IOA for any additional sponsor agreements executed by Parties for India House.”
Stated differently, any business that made a one-time payment to support the India House would also serve as an Associate Sponsor for the IOA.
Usha announced that she had “convened a meeting of RIL representatives and Mr. Rohit Rajpal (Chairman of the IOA’s Sponsorship Committee) on September 20, 2023 at Olympic Bhavan, New Delhi” because she was “alarmed” by the “proposed terms of renegotiation by RIL.”
On October 20, 2023, after a month-long negotiation process, “it was agreed that there would be no rights fee reduction and the IOA”
On September 12, 2024, the IOA received a memo from the CAG’s audit team headed “Undue favor to the Company (RIL)”.
It said that the IOA suffered a “loss of Rs 24 crore” as a result of handing up sponsorship arrangements for the youth and winter events, as well as the Commonwealth and Asian Games in 2022 and 2026, as well as the Olympics in Paris and Los Angeles.
The number was determined with the assumption that Reliance will give the IOA an average of Rs 6 crore every game.
The revenue-sharing agreement was another criticism raised by the CAG. Reliance agreed to send the extra money from the India House after recovering the expenses of constructing the lounge in the amended agreement.
Regarding RIL’s Additional Rights Revenue from the 2024 Olympics? RIL may provide copies of the agreements that were signed with them for audit.
In addition, the CAG requested “relevant files along with a copy of the Company’s accounts” (Reliance).
statement on October 8 asserted that the Youth and Winter Olympics have “no meaningful media or public interest,” in contrast to the CWG, the Olympics,
and the Asian Games. Additionally, in comparison to other Games like the CWG, AG (Asian Games), and OG (Olympic Games), “the size of the contingents and probability of winning medals at these events is very small,” the author noted.
“The CAG audit team’s calculation assumes that each of the six events… would bring in a uniform sum of Rs 6 crore per event to the IOA. As a result,
the remaining four events should have also drawn in similar sums,” the speaker continued. Such an assumption is false, as previously stated.
Usha called out the previous administration’s tendering procedure for the India House, pointing fingers at them.
