Start work on multipurpose sports complex: Amritsar residents

Amritsar, March 10

After the AAP-led Punjab Government allocated Rs 258 crore for the 2023-24 fiscal for strengthening sports infrastructure and undertaking various initiatives, local residents have raised a demand for developing a multipurpose sports stadium on priority. The project has been hanging fire for over the last 12 years.

To be spread over 21 acres of land, the sports complex was proposed to have three cricket grounds, three basketball courts, three tennis courts, two volleyball courts, a hockey ground, a football ground, a synthetic athletics track, skating rinks as well as an indoor sports complex.

It will also have sports infrastructure like four badminton, four table tennis, two squash courts, a wrestling and a swimming pool.

Balwinder Singh Shammi, a hockey Olympian, said the right kind of sports infrastructure with playing equipment could become a nursery of players. The holy city has produced players in different sports disciplines and availability of infrastructure would prove a nursery for budding players. Similarly, an AstroTurf (an artificial grass surface used for sports fields) inside the hockey ground of Guru Nanak Dev University should be replaced immediately.

It was in January 2022 that then Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had become the third dignitary after former Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh to have laid the foundation stone of the proposed multipurpose sports stadium in E-Block of Ranjit Avenue.

A brainchild of cricketer-turned politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, former president of the PPCC, the sport complex became a victim of politics. As relations between Sidhu and the Badals soured, the project was not executed. After Sidhu joined the Congress, a ray of hope was rekindled that it would be completed. But soon a tiff started between then CM Capt Amarinder Singh and Sidhu. Hopes dashed again. Work on it never saw the light of day.

It was on November 12, 2011, when the then Deputy Chief Minister (Sukhbir) had laid the foundation stone of the sports complex. Later, Capt Amarinder Singh had laid the stone of the complex in 2017.

Sohan Singh, a veteran wrestling player, said allocation of Rs 258 crore was 55 per cent more than the previous fiscal. Sports seemed to be a priority with the present dispensation. But at the end of the day it all depended on the implementation of the plan.