Vij urges Abhay Chautala, Cong leaders to resign from sports bodies, hold fresh polls

CHANDIGARH: Haryana sports and youth affairs minister Anil Vij on Tuesday said the department was geared up to host the forthcoming national games.

Replying to a question raised during the ongoing budget session of the Haryana assembly, Vij said the Indian Olympic Association had offered Haryana to host the games, earlier scheduled in Goa, for which the state government was fully ready.

Vij also appealed to Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala and members of the Congress to resign from their respective posts in the Haryana Olympic Association and conduct fresh elections under the supervision of an independ- ent agency. Vij said the biggest hurdle in holding the national games was the functioning of the “so called two to three Olympic associations’’ in the state. KABBADI TOURNEY ON SEPTEMBER 25

In reply to another question, Vij said the Rashtriya Kabbadi Pratiyogita would be organised on the birth anniversary of Pt Deendayal Upadhyay on September 25. He said the winning team would be given a cash prize of ` 1 crore, the team securing the second position would get ` 50 lakh, and the third team would get ` 25 lakh. 23 LEOPARDS IN KALESAR NATIONAL PARK

Haryana forests minister Rao Narbir Singh said the popula- tion of leopards in the Kalesar National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary was about 23, and their density was estimated to be 15 per 100 square km. He said a study was conducted with the help of the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, by installing camera traps at a cost of about `19 lakh between December 2014 and April 2015. The species counted included leopard, leop- ard cat, rusty spotted cat, jungle cat, jackal, Asiatic elephant, chital, sambar, barking deer, goral, nilgai, Indian crested porcupine, small Indian civet, common palm civet, gray langur, rhesus macaque, gray mongoose, wild boars and Indian hare. 1 CRORE TO MLAs UNDER MODEL VILLAGE SCHEME

Development and panchayats minister OP Dhankar said chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had approved ` 1 crore to be given to all MLAs under the Adarsh Gram Yojana for undertaking various development works in villages adopted by them. WATER BEING SUPPLIED TO 36 ILLEGAL COLONIES

Minister of state for public health engineering Ghanshyam Saraf said water was being supplied to 36 unauthorised colonies of Panipat Rural constituency through 46 tubewells. Replying to a question, he said work to provide water in nine unauthorised colonies was under progress by installing four tubewells. He said the civic body had been asked to provide land for drilling of tubewells to supply water to the remaining 34 such colonies.