14 years after district status, Palwal yet to get adequate sports infrastructure

Bijendra Ahlawat

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Palwal, January 4

While 14 years have passed after Palwal got district status, the residents are yet to get adequate sports infrastructure. The construction of district-level stadiums is incomplete. Palwal was upgraded as a new district in 2008.

“The demand for a district-level stadium was raised for the first time in 2014 and the projects got sanctioned and launched formally in 2018-19. But these have failed to come up in the past four years,” said sources in the district administration. Claiming that while work is on both the outdoor and indoor stadiums, these are not expected to be functional soon in the wake of the poor pace of work and issues connected with the completion of the projects.

“While less than 50 per cent of the work of the outdoor stadium is over, the work of the indoor stadium has been at a standstill for the past several months. It requires finishing touches,” claimed an official on the condition of anonymity.

He said that sportspersons in the district are mainly dependent on the sports facilities and infrastructure maintained by private institutions. Even the district Sports Department is yet to get an independent office building, it is claimed.

Despite the matter getting raised at a district-level meeting and a six-member committee headed by the ADC being formed in October last year, there has been no progress, it is reported.

Out of the total amount of Rs 20 crore earmarked for the two stadiums, the share of the outdoor and indoor stadiums was Rs 13.9 crore and Rs 7 crore respectively, it is revealed.

The outdoor and indoor stadiums are located at Gughera village, about 9 km from the district headquarters, and on the premises of the Government Senior Secondary School in the city respectively.

According to Sports Department sources, the pace of work on the both the stadiums has been extremely poor, perhaps due to issues connected with delay in release of payments and inadequate attention by the authorities concerned. Admitting to the slow pace, Dhurender Singh, District Sports Officer (DSO), said that issue has been brought to the notice of the authorities concerned, and efforts were on to get the projects completed this year.

Efforts on to complete work this year

The pace of work has been extremely poor, perhaps due to delay in release of payments and inadequate attention by the authorities concerned. Efforts are on to get the projects completed this year. Dhurender Singh, district sports officer