Sports Cities to come up in Tirupati, Vizag, Amaravati

Amaravati: The State government planned to establish three Sports Cities in Tirupati, Visakhapatnam and Amaravati, informed Minister for Sports Kollu Ravindra at a press conference at the Secretariat on Tuesday. He said that the State government created NTR Sports Grounds in all the 175 Assembly constituencies in the State and will focus on developing Sports Cities.

In addition to that, he said that government will construct the NTR Sports Grounds at all mandals in the State. These grounds will be constructed through Public Private Partnership. So far, the government identified 150 acres of land in Visakhapatnam for construction of Sports City.

He said that 10 sports academies were established by the government in the State. Out of them, there are four water sports academies, he added. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu formally launched project Gandiva recently to encourage students to take part in Olympic Games, he added.

Through an agreement entered with former cricketer Anil Kumble, the government has been providing training and skills in athletics and sports to more than 1.25 lakh students at 100 centres in the State. In the second phase, government will provide training on par with global standards at Acharya Nagarjuna University by selecting the best performing students through these 100 centres, he said.

He said that it was decided to organise the State Olympic Association elections in a transparent manner and hence he suggested all the registered sports organisations in the State to implement Sports Code Bill introduced by the Central government. They must comply with the provisions of the Sports Code Bill by September 15, he said.

The Minister said that they would distribute 10,000 sports kits to the students across the State in this academic year. All the playgrounds in the schools will be developed through MGRNEGA, he added.