Union Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports (Independent) Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday appealed to State governments to identify sites in every block for creating sports infrastructure to help realise the goal set by the Centre to make sports “a way of life.”
During an interaction with journalists here, the Minister said that his ministry had set the goal of building sports complexes in each of the more than 7,000 development blocks of the country under the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Abhiyan programme and would require cooperation of the State Governments as sports is a State subject.
The objective is to harness the sports talent in rural areas and make India a sporting hub of the world, he said.
Mr. Sonowal announced that his ministry would organise the first edition of the Himalayan Region Sports meet with participation of north-eastern States, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bhutan and Nepal, in Guwahati.
He said the Indian Olympic Association had conveyed its decision to make Guwahati as the venue of South Asian Federation Games.
The Minister said that the National Youth Festival would be held in Guwahati from January 8 to 12.
