State fails to promote sports in rural areas

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, July 11

The youth hailing from rural areas in hilly/far-flung districts continue to be at the receiving end due to the lack of initiatives by the successive governments in J&K to promote sports.

The sorry state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that the District Sports Councils, which were constituted way back in 2015 by the then BJP-PDP coalition government, are yet to be made fully functional even after four years.

The motive of constituting these councils was to conduct the activities in all districts in multi-disciplines throughout the year with the maximum participation of the youth, including both men and women, but that did not happen. The draft of the sports policy of the J&K State Sports Council also has a mention about these councils with a special focus on the hilly districts, from where the youth have always been ignored.

Sources said even the Centrally sponsored scheme like ‘Khelo India, which was launched by the Government of India with the sole purpose of promoting sports at the grass-roots level, had failed to meet its target in the state’s rural areas, especially the Jammu province.

They said no expenditure had been incurred under the flagship scheme in four districts of the Jammu province for the past two-three years. These are Doda, Ramban, Kishtwar and Reasi. As a result, the rural youth have no access to the sports facilities in these far-flung districts.

The six districts of the Jammu division were covered under the ‘Khelo India’ scheme and also received financial assistance to conduct activities at the block/panchayat level. They include Jammu (Rs 55,80,392), Poonch (Rs 10,55,150), Rajouri (Rs 8,32,817), Kathua (Rs 16,03,630), Samba (Rs 12,38,617) and Udhampur (Rs 15,97,634).

When contacted, Ravi Singh, Divisional Sports Officer, J&K State Sports Council, confirmed that the District Sports Councils were not fully functional. When asked whether any meeting was conducted regarding their functioning, he said “we have no information about this”.