More than 700 students from across the country will be sprinting, jumping and throwing for top honours at the 27th national-level athletic meet of schools coming under the Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Samsthan that was launched here on Monday.
The three-day tournament, being held at Sharada Vidyalaya, Talapady around 20 km from Mangaluru, will see schools competing in over 25 events including races ranking from 100 m to 5,000 m as well as cross country walks, long jump, discus throw, javelin throw, hurdles, shot put, hammer throw and pole vault.
The competitions are being held in separate categories for boys and girls.
Throwing the games open after a series of elaborate customs, U.T. Khader, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, said the only way a nation can become self-reliant is if the younger generation became strong.
“Sports is one of the ways children can become mentally and physically strong,” he said.
Vidya Bharathi-Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Samsthan is an association that covers more than 25,000 formal and informal schools in the country. The participants were selected after they emerged victorious in the regional rounds held earlier in the year.
The schools will be competing under ten different banners, with multiple States coming under one zone. These include: Uttara (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Jammu-Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh), Pachimi Uttara (Bruj Pradesh, Meerut, Uttarakhand), Poorvi Uttar (Kashi, Avad, Kanpur, Goraknath), Uttar Poorva (Bihar, Jharkhand), Poorvottara (Assam, Arunachal, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya), Poorva (Odisha, West Bengal, Sikkim, Andaman-Nicobar), Dakshina (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu), Paschima (Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan) and Madhya (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh).
At the inauguration of the competition, 86-year-old sports trainer, B.N. Shankarnarayan, was felicitated.
