Have not got Rs 2L annual grant over past few years: Sports bodies

Several state sports associations have claimed that they have not received the annual grant from the Sports Department for the past few years. While sports bodies such as boxing and athletics associations allege that they have not received the grant for the past four or five years, the Sports Department says that the grant “lapsed” last year and the budget for this year’s grant is yet to be approved.

“The grant could not be disbursed to most of the associations last year but was given in the preceding years to those which had submitted audited documents to the Sports Department. Only those associations, which have not been submitting audited documents, may be facing problems regarding the release of grant,” says a Sports Department official.

However, some sports associations claim that they have not received the grant for the past four or five years though they have submitted the audited documents. “We have regularly submitted the audited documents to the Sports Department but have not received the grant for the past five years. If there was some shortcoming in the submitted documents, why the department had not written to us about it,” says SK Shandil, Secretary, State Boxing Association.

The State Rifle Association is also annoyed with the Sports Department. “We have stopped applying to the Sports Department for the annual grant, as the process has become too cumbersome. For a meagre amount of Rs 2 lakh per annum, there’s a lot of paper work and many queries. So, we have simply stopped applying for the grant,” says Ishwar Rohal, Secretary, State Rifle Association.

The Sports Department gives an annual grant of Rs 2 lakh to the state associations of priority games such as athletics, boxing, shooting, kabaddi, volleyball, etc. These games are placed in category A. The state associations, which are placed in the category B and C, get Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 1 lakh per annum, respectively. This amount is primarily used for organising state championships and sending teams for national championships and arranging kits. “Sports associations have to spend Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh in organising a state championship for just one age group. So even if the grant is given regularly, it’s highly inadequate,” says an official of the State Athletics Association.

The officials of the sports associations say that the government and the Sports Department should look at how Punjab and Haryana nurture sports and sportspersons. “Even Uttarakhand is offering much better support and facilities to sportspersons than our state, leave alone Punjab and Haryana,” says Rohal. “We do not have even a full-time Sports Director. Handling other departments as well, how much time can he give to sports?” he asks.