A parliamentary standing committee on youth and sports yesterday came down heavily on National Sports Council for procuring a faulty electric scoreboard at Tk 5 crore and installing it at Mirpur Swimming Complex in 2019.

In a meeting, the committee for the Ministry of Youth and Sports alleged corruption against the council members and urged the authorities to take stern actions against those involved in the corruption.

Presiding over the meeting, Abdullah Al Islam Jakob, chairman of the committee and lawmaker of Bhola-4, said the scoreboard was out of order from the very first day of its installation.

"Whenever you purchase a thing -- be it a motorbike or a mobile phone or an air conditioner -- you first check if it works properly. Then you make the payment and purchase it," Jakob said.

"In case of this scoreboard, how could the respective officials pay the supplier without examining the scoreboard properly?" asked Jakob.

Meanwhile, National Sports Council had formed a three-member probe body, led by Shah Alam Sardar, joint secretary, director (sports), NSC, in this connection.

The probe committee, earlier, reported to the ministry that the scoreboard was faulty and did not work.

NSC took the initiative to renovate Mirpur Syed Nazrul Islam Swimming Pool at the closing ceremony of the competition to find the best swimmer in 2019, said sources.

As part of this, the old scoreboard was replaced with a new scoreboard by Daktronics Company.

After installing the new scoreboard, the Bangladesh Games, National Championships and Age-wise National Swimming Competitions were held at the pool.

The main issue with electronic scoreboards was that it couldn't provide the timing of all lanes at a time. Sometimes the timing is shown in five or six lanes out of eight. That is why it is not possible to record the timing of any swimmer, said sources.

Sometimes the last lane timing is visible after about 10 seconds. At the time the swimmer finishes the swim, the timing is added by 10 seconds next to his name on the scoreboard, they added.

Participants used to take part in the swimming competition are not satisfied with the false impression of hand-timing because they can't get exact personal timing.

Officials at the Bangladesh Swimming Federation earlier said they stopped using the scoreboard as it couldn't provide timing. They had to use a stopwatch instead.