Last Updated on December 17, 2020 at 7:08 pm
Under Prime Minister’s Development Projects (PMDP) in the year of 2017, three Water Sports Centres worth crores were announced simultaneously for both Jammu and Kashmir region. The Kashmir based project has been completed and inaugurated, but Jammu’s Centre has not even taken off.
These Water Sports Centres were announced to be situated at Nehru Park Dalgate Srinagar and Ranjit Sagar Lake Basholi (Kathua). The former project has been completed and inaugurated recently by the Lt Governor, Manoj Sinha on October 28, but the same project announced simultaneously for Jammu region is yet to start its construction work.
Sources informed that the executing body, the J&K Sports Council has declared the site for the construction of the Water Sports Centre at Palai in Basholi near the Tourism department building. As the construction work was started by the Council last year, the owners of the land objected to this construction and demanded compensation of their land. Now the Council has deposited around Rs 32 lakh in addition to project cost as compensation money of the proposed land to District Development Commissioner Kathua, but still, the final call regarding the transfer of land to the Council is yet to be taken.
The sources alleged that the inefficiency of the J&K Sports Council as well as District Administration can be estimated from this fact that the Kashmir based Water Sports Centre is functioning for organising all activities, while on other hand, the premier body of the sports has failed to take ownership of a piece of land where construction work will be started.
The Kashmir based officials of the JK Sports Council finished the construction work of the Water Sports Centre despite all odd situations like shortage of manpower (labourers) since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, followed by COVID-19 pandemic but the officials don’t appear very much bothered for the construction of the centre at Basholi.
The incumbent administration of Jammu and Kashmir is planning to establish a Sports Academy in Jammu and Kashmir for proper mentoring and monitoring of budding talents in the region, but the premier body of the Council appears to have no interest in their past commitments.
