No cheer on National Sports Day

Deepankar Sharda

Chandigarh, August 28

On Monday, Chandigarh's sports-lovers will not witness the traditional celebrations of the National Sports Day in the city. Usually the UT Education Department and Sports Department jointly celebrate the day by honouring meritorious sportspersons of the city. They also used to organise a hockey match and invite/honour former international sportspersons, but nothing of this sort is happening tomorrow.

This year, the UT Sports Department is organising only a 3km run while the UT Education Department has not bothered to organise a single event to celebrate the National Sports Day, which is celebrated on the birth anniversary of hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand.

"We are organising a 3km run to mark the day. Around 400 players will run in the race, from the Sector 42 Sports Complex. The participants will be given T-shirts to celebrate the day," said SK Joshi, District Sports officer. On not organising the annual function, the official said, "We were unable to plan anything as the administration has appointed a new director recently, and we didn't have the time to work this out. Nevertheless, the run is also part of the celebrations. A few years back, the department used to celebrate the day in the same way. Also, this year the meritorious sportspersons were awarded prize money through cheques directly submitted to their banks. So there was no such sportsperson to be awarded on the day."

On August 3, Captain Karnail Singh was appointed as the new director but notably, in these 25 days, no actual proposal has been submitted to him to celebrate the sports day.

Meanwhile, the UT Education Department, which has a special sports branch functioning under the district education officer, has accepted that no event is being organised on Monday. No specific reason was given for not celebrating the day.  A spokesperson for the department said: "It is regretful that we are not organising any event to celebrate the day. The sports branch might have not received any invitation by the Sports Department in this regard."

But why were they depending on an invite from the Sports Department for this? Didn't the Education Department organise a cultural evening and reward meritorious sportspersons at Tagore Theatre (Sector 18) in the past? Reacting to this, the spokesperson added: "I don't know what happened this year. Both the departments used to organise the event jointly. This is bad that nothing of this sort is going to happen in Chandigarh. Our people (Education Department) could have organised some event on their own."