Sports centre exclusively for training disabled persons to come up in Gwalior

A Rs 171-crore project to construct a sports centre exclusively for training disabled persons for national and international competitions will soon come up in Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior district, official sources said on Monday.

The deadline for completing the project is March 31, 2021 and six months thereafter, it will start functioning, they said.

In February this year, the Union Cabinet had approved the project to be built near Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute in Gwalior. After the final design was approved, construction work was entrusted to CPWD, the sources said.

The project is awaiting sanction by the finance department of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. After which, the tenders will be called for civil works, they said.

 

Department of Empowerment of Persons With Disabilities Secretary Shakuntala D Gamlin said the sports complex would be a tribute to the athletes who have excelled.

"It is an acknowledgement of their unparalleled competence to perform along with the international participants and in this process inspiring many more to do well, even without such training facilities," she said.

The centre will be registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and it will have facilities like an outdoor athletic stadium, indoor sports complex and an aquatic centre, the sources said.

There will be classrooms, medical facilities, sports science centre, hostels, support facilities, including accessible lockers, dining and recreational amenities, and an administrative block in the sports centre, they said.

The centre will also hold national and international events. Training for dance sport, power lifting, badminton, tennis, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, judo, taekwondo will be made available there.

The sources pointed out that as per Section 30 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the government should ensure effective participation of disabled persons in sports.

The centre will have a governing body comprising a maximum of 12 members, some of them experts from national level sports federations and para games, they said.