Suresh Kalmadi dies at 81: From Pune Congress strongman to 2010 CWG scandal

Pune: Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Suresh Kalmadi passed away in Pune early Tuesday after a prolonged illness, family sources said. He was 81.

His mortal remains will be kept at Kalmadi House in Erandwane till 2 pm, and the last rites will be held at Vaikunth crematorium in Navi Peth at 3.30 pm. 

Kalmadi was among Pune’s most influential Congress faces for decades, straddling politics and sports administration.

A former Indian Air Force pilot, he moved into public life through the Youth Congress and went on to serve multiple terms in Parliament, including representing Pune in the Lok Sabha. 

In government, he served as Minister of State for Railways in the mid-1990s. In Pune’s civic and cultural landscape, he was also closely identified with marquee public events such as the Pune Festival and the Pune International Marathon, which helped him build a broad local network cutting across party lines. 

Nationally, Kalmadi became a prominent name in sports administration, serving as president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and holding key roles in athletics bodies over the years. 

However, his public legacy remains inseparable from the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where he headed the organising committee. 

The Games, while delivered amid intense global scrutiny, were also engulfed by allegations of irregularities flagged in official audits and investigated by agencies. Kalmadi was booked under corruption-related provisions and was arrested in April 2011 in connection with the case, following which the Congress suspended him.

Over time, the legal outcome across CWG-linked cases has been mixed and sprawling. A Delhi court in 2025 accepted the Enforcement Directorate’s closure report in the CWG money-laundering case, effectively ending that probe. 

However, a separate CBI case linked to the timing-scoring-results (TSR) system contract, where Kalmadi was among those named, has continued for years, with the trial still pending and the matter stuck in prolonged evidence recording, according to court-tracking reports. 

Leaders across parties expressed grief over his death on Tuesday, marking the end of a career that combined long political influence in Pune with a high-profile rise in Indian sports administration, before the CWG controversy reshaped how a generation came to remember him.