To strengthen and develop sports culture at the grassroot level in Punjab, the Deputy Chief Minster Sukhbir Badal on Wednesday launched leagues in five sporting disciplines — hockey, volleyball, basketball, football and handball.
Presiding over a meeting with high officials of sports department, Sukhbir directed them to launch local Punjab league events in which teams from all 22 districts in five disciplines would compete for titles.
He has also asked the department to provide transportation and better lodging facilities to players at each district headquarters.
Deliberating upon the arrangements of upcoming fifth World Kabbadi Cup 2014, Sukhbir approved the schedule for the same. The fifth World Kabbadi Cup 2014 would be held from November 29 to December 14 immediately after the World Kabbadi league.
He also directed the sports department to organize Shaheed Bhagat Singh sports tournament annually having multiple discipline competitions. This year, the event would be held at the end of October or first week of November, he said.
To set the pace for Rio Olympics, Sukhbir asked the department to especially concentrate on shooting and wrestling as Punjab has a great potential to bag medals in these events.
To facilitate the shooters, it was also decided to establish world class shooting ranges in Mohali and Bathinda, besides providing free of cost weapons and ammunition.
Sukhbir also emphasized on the need to engage services sports institutes like National Institute of Sports (NIS), Patiala, and Army Institute of Pune in this regard.
He approved the proposal regarding setting up of headquarter of Punjab State Institute of Sports at Sector-78 in SAS Nagar (Mohali). He also ordered to appoint the Director General of for this sports institute by the end of next month.
The meeting also decided that winners of recently-held Commonwealth Games at Glasgow from Punjab would be honoured along with the medal winners in upcoming Asian games in Incheon (South Korea) as all players were busy in preparation for these games.