Move CWG to Jharkhand to end Maoism: Aiyar

NEW DELHI - Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar Saturday said that if the Commonwealth Games (CWG) were moved to the Jharkhand forests, it would end the Maoist trouble.

“Organise the Commonwealth (Games) in the jungles of Jharkhand, and you will see the end of Maoism,” said Aiyar, who openly criticises Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s anti-Maoist policy.

Development should be decentralized and every part of the country should get an equal share, he added.

Sticking to his earlier stand against organising the Commonwealth Games in the capital, the MP called the event a waste of money. “This is a circus where we are putting in crores and crores of rupees.”

He was speaking after a convention of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee on “Communal Harmony and Indian National Congress”.

The former sports minister said: “When 90 percent of the children in the country do not have any sporting facility, how could we invest so much on one games?”

According to Aiyar, it was unfair that the capital - “the most prosperous state in India” - hosts all the big sports events like Asian Games in 1951 and 1982 and now the Commonwealth Games.

“After that they were hoping to bring Asian Games 2014 and then the Olympics… Will only Delhi host all the sporting events?” he wondered.

Aiyar declared that he would go on a satyagraha when the Commonwealth Games start in Delhi. “I do not know which sort of satyagraha will it be, but I will do some sort of pilates for that time period.”