Ranchi, Oct. 16: A day after the 34th National Games was postponed, managers of the mega sports event that was worth more than Rs 800 crore have started counting their losses estimated to be around Rs 4 crore at least.

Advances made to an event management company to conduct opening and closing ceremonies and a transport company, apart from expenses already incurred — on medicines and a flag hand-over ceremony — form the bulk of the losses that were being tallied the day after the games were put off to be held when the state has an elected government in place.

The total expenses so far has been pegged at Rs 855 crore which includes Rs 615 crore that was spent on creating infrastructure at Mega Sports Complex, Birsa Munda Stadium, Astro Turf ground and at Dhanbad and Jamshedpur.

Besides, Rs 240 crore was spent on organising various events and for buying sports equipment.

The event management firm, Whizcraft, that was handling the opening and closing ceremonies, has pulled out and communicated its inability to return the advance it had received.

Whizcraft was given a mobilisation advance of about Rs 2.6 crore, which was 30 per cent of Rs 8.2 crore, the expense for both the opening and closing ceremonies.

“The firm was given the advance early this year when the games was scheduled for June 1, 2009. But now after its postponement for the fifth time, the company has written us saying it wanted to back out,” said sports secretary R.S. Verma.

Verma, also an organising secretary in the National Games Organising Committee (NGOC), added the company said it was unable to return the advance as it had already made part payments to petty contractors.

NGOC has a Rs 84 lakh bank guarantee from Whizcraft and if the company is firm about walking out of the event, the organisers are set to make a loss of at least Rs 1.8 crore.

However, officials of NGOC and the state administration said they were thinking of taking the matter to court, but sources said the contract signed with Whizcraft mentioned June 1, 2009, as the scheduled date for the games.

Arrangements for transport services at the venues of Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad would also cost the NGOC. A Delhi-based transport service provider, owned by one Surendra Singh, had been given a mobilisation advance of about Rs 2 crore.

But, since the agency, chosen after four rounds of bidding, had recently expressed its desire to back out, the NGOC had, as The Telegraph had reported, invited fresh tenders without nullifying the earlier agreement.

NGOC also bought medicines for around Rs 10 lakh last year in view of the earlier schedules of December 2008 or June 2009. Nitin Madan Kulkarni, the special secretary in the state health department who was asked to head the medicine sub-committee, had, in turn, asked a team led by the state drug controller to verify quality and expiry dates of the medicines.

Some of the other expenses already incurred include Rs 30 lakh spent on the October 12 flag handing over ceremony where singer Daler Mehendi performed for a fee of Rs 12 lakh.

NGOC advertisements to the media also ran into several lakhs.

NGOC was wise that in the later tender notices published to shortlist vendors and agencies, it did not mention the dates of the event. Otherwise, it would have had to incur further losses.

By 2009, the overall cost of the event — infrastructure, equipment, organisational expenses, among others — had crossed Rs 855 crore against a budget of Rs 250 crore in 2006 when the games was scheduled for November 2007.

The postponement has, however, left bureaucrats happy. Many of them had been forced to head various sub-committees (transport, medicine, volunteer, accommodation etc) and they were now relieved to have been “saved the embarrassment”.

“We are now feeling relaxed… we had been made heads of different sub-committees. We had apprehensions of becoming scapegoats in the long run,” said a senior IAS officer requesting anonymity, indicating that not many within the bureaucracy believed that Jharkhand would be able to pull off an event of such a scale.