While the Marathwada Industrial Association (MIA) is patting itself on the back for the two-week-long public relations exercise, sports lovers in the city have raised a cloud of dust, alleging that the expo has damaged the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation's Garware stadium, without making the organisers accountable.

Rajendra Dangwal, national coach of the Maharashtra school tennis contingent, wrote to Municipal Commissioner A N Vaidya on April 11, expressing his apprehensions. He said the sports complex was reserved as a playground and should not be hired out for any other purpose.

The AMC was also allegedly misled into hiring out its stadium as a smaller playground adjacent to it had been enlisted as the exposition's original venue. However, when the MIA found the ground under-prepared and the enormity of the levelling work dawned on them, they switchedto the larger stadium allegedly without intimating the AMC, Dangwal claims. Invitations went out to prospective participants and it was too late to blow the whistle on the association at that juncture. The controversy also moved backstage, when Dangwal was warned by a senior corporation office-bearer not to mess with some of the ``most powerful people in the state''. Obviously, his letter to the commissioner went unanswered.

He says industrialists and politicians with vested interests had also exerted considerable pressure on the corporation to hire out the venue for the state's biggest industrial event. Dangwal also points out that the potential damage to the stadium had completely escaped the attention of Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, who presided over the exposition's inaugural ceremony.

However, civic officials are not taking the allegations seriously, saying Dangwal is making much ado about nothing.

Former mayor Rashid Khan, who was the incumbent when deliberations on the expo were in progress,says the stadium's construction had been stalled for two years. ``Not a whimper was heard during that period. Why are voices being raised now? The exhibition was held at the stadium for the benefit of the region and industry,'' he told The Indian Express.