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India may host 2002 Asiad
From T.R. Ramachandran
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Aug 29 — There is a strong possibility of India hosting the 2002 Asian Games as South Korea has expressed its inability to provide free board and lodging or picking up the tab on the air passage for the 10000-odd athletes.

An Indian delegation headed by Union Minister for Mines, Youth Welfare and Sports Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, which had gone to Tashkent to attend the executive board meeting of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) on August 27 and bid for the 2006 Asian Games, returned here early this morning convinced that New Delhi can indeed be the venue for the 2002 Asian sports extravaganza.

South Korea had been selected to host the 2002 Asian Games in Pusan but it expressed its helplessness in providing free board and lodging or picking up the mind-boggling air travel bill for the athletes and other sportspersons.

The executive board of the OCA while giving South Korea a month’s time to procure a bank guarantee for ensuring free board and lodging and air passage, asked India if it can step in and fill the breach as New Delhi already has the requisite infrastructure specially created for the 1982 Asian Games. Authoritative sources in the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said South Korea has cried off for all practical purposes in hosting the 2002 Asian Games and the OCA has given that country one last chance to redeem its pledge by coming forward with a bank guarantee.

“India’s bid was the most attractive and sound for the 2006 Games,” these sources claimed. India, Malaysia, Qatar and Hong Kong are the four contenders for staging the 2006 Asian Games. India has shown its keenness to host the 2002 Asian Games with South Korea dithering in the last minute as it were. Whether this becomes a reality will be known in November at the next meeting of the OCA executive board scheduled to be held at Ishkabad, Kirghistan.

The Indian delegation at the OCA executive board meeting submitted a letter signed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government will bear the cost of air passage of the athletes besides providing free board and lodging during the 2006 Asian Games. That offer holds good should India be given green signal by the OCA for hosting the 2002 Asian Games.

If India hosts the 2002 Asian Games, then Kuala Lumpur, Doha and Hong Kong will be in the reckoning for the 2006 Asian Games. Problems might arise again for the 2006 Asian Games as Malaysia, Qatar and Hong Kong are also highly skeptical about footing the air passage of athletes and providing them free board and lodging.

Mr Vajpayee and the IOA are confident that India can host the Asian Games without any hiccups despite stout resistance from the finance ministry and certain other quarters that it will cost the exchequer upwards of Rs 500 to Rs 600 crore. The IOA maintains that the cost of staging the Asian Games can be more than recovered from sponsorships and by selling television rights.

New Delhi will be hosting the first Afro-Asian games, a much smaller version of the Asian Games, in November 2001. “We will, in any case, have a dress rehearsal for the Asian Games in the form of the Afro-Asian Games next year,” sources said.

With the 2002 Asian Games seemingly in India’s grasp, it will be third time that this country will be staging such a sporting spectacle. New Delhi has the distinction of holding the inaugural Asian Games way back in 1951, thanks to the initiative of the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

As regards building a new Asian Games village for the athletes and the coaches because the one constructed for the 1982 edition off Khel Gaon Marg in the national capital has since been sold, sources said that the Delhi Development Authority has land readily available near Chattarpur village which can easily be developed and made ready by 2002.