Shillong, Sep 23: Shillong’s JN Sports Complex has been chosen as another site for a Khelo India State Centre of Excellence, Union Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports Kiren Rijiju has said.
Meghalaya and five other states and Union Territories – Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Sikkim – have been identified in the second leg.
Meghalaya’s centre will focus on archery, athletics and boxing.
Eight states were chosen in the first round – Karnataka, Odisha, Kerala, Telangana, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland.
“These six new Khelo India State Centres of Excellence are another step towards building a robust sports ecosystem in the country,” Rijiju said. “This will help India’s pursuit of excellence at the Olympics in the coming years. We are making sure that we add more state-of-the-art centres to the growing list, which will ensure that athletes proficient in a certain sport can be given the highest level of training and that these training centres provide the best facilities in the country.”
These centres have been shortlisted based on the training facilities available in priority sports, infrastructure facilities and champions produced. The sports facilities were selected by each state and Union Territory, which was asked to identify the best sports infrastructure available with them or their agencies or any eligible agencies that could be developed into world-class sporting facilities.
In order to upgrade the existing centre to a KISCE, the government will extend ‘viability gap funding’ in sports science and technology support for disciplines practised at the centre and also bridge the gap in requirement of sports equipment, expert coaches and high performance managers.
The support extended will be to a maximum of three Olympic sports per centre, though support can be extended in sports science and allied fields in other sporting disciplines being run in the centre.
(Photo: Facebook/Kiren Rijiju)