Aiming to promote sports talents and hone the skills in rural parts of the state, the Yogi Adityanath government will be organising rural sports events and setting up mini stadiums in rural areas of all 75 districts.
Construction of as many as 20 mini stadiums is underway across the state with the government releasing the third installment for the project. In addition, the government has also sanctioned 30 more such stadiums which are in different stages of the process.
Recently, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had felicitated sportspersons who brought laurels to the country in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics.
A senior government spokesman said, “The idea behind the whole exercise is to tap the immense talent in the rural areas and give them a national and international platform. Setting up mini stadiums in rural areas will provide opportunities to the youths of these areas and facilitate their exposure to competitions.”
UP Sports Minister Upendra Tiwari said that after the Yogi government took over reins, it started organising rural sports competitions to encourage the youth to pursue sports.
“An amount of Rs 40,000 was released to each district for the events. In view of the interest of the players in rural areas, the budget was increased in the 2018-19 fiscal and now sports competitions have also been started at block levels with a budget of Rs 250 lakh. Rural sports competitions were organised in 701 development blocks of 62 districts during 2020-21. A total of 18 divisional and six zonal level competitions were organised and they gave the rural youth an opportunity to come forward through these competitions,” he said.