On the go with its plan to promote sports in the State, Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Sunday announced a slew of decisions including conducting fourth World Cup Kabaddi, four-nation hockey tournament, and coming up of dozens of world-class stadiums, and upgradation of sports infrastructure across the State.
The decisions were taken during a high-level meeting to review the progress of ongoing sports complexes, and giving final touches to the sports calendar for the year 2013-14.
Clearing decks for holding fourth edition of World Cup Kabaddi in the second half of November this year, Sukhbir said that strict anti-doping guidelines, by National Anti-Doping Agency, would be implemented in the tournament.
He said that 25 nations are expected to participate in the event, and the State would seek more participation from Europe, Africa, USA, Australia and other non representative sub-continents to give Kabaddi a world class status. The State Government would also take up the issue with International Olympic Committee to include Kabaddi in 2020 Olympics.
The State is also planning to conduct four-nation hockey tournament in September. For the same, Sukhbir asked Sports Secretary Ashok Gupta to have consultation with Hockey India and International Hockey Federation to fix the itinerary of the tournament.
He added, that all the 20 stadiums including hockey stadiums would be inaugurated by this international hockey tournament.
Emphasising the need for world-class sports infrastructure, he said that 11 world class stadiums have already been completed at the cost of Rs 96 crore and nine more stadiums would be dedicated to the nation by December this year.
He added that eight of these stadiums have been floodlit and sports stadium at Ghudda and village Badal would have synthetic track costing Rs 5 crore for each stadium. It was also informed in the meeting that 11 stadiums that are set to be completed included Bathinda, Sangrur, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Mohali, Faridkot, PAU ludhiana, Jalandhar and Ghudda.
To inculcate sports culture in the State, Sukhbir said that a record provision of Rs 91 crore has been made in the current budget and Rs 13 crore has been set aside for developing play grounds in 1,233 villages.
He said that 2,200 sportspersons would be graded and would get monthly scholarship of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000.
Badal said that Punjab Government has already finalized the plan to establish Shaheed Baba Deep Singh Center of Excellence in Sports at Mohali with four regional campuses at Bathinda, Jalandhar, ludhiana and Amritsar at the cost of Rs 100 crore, in which 2,000 budding sportspersons would be selected for training.