DESERT STORM
It’s open season in Rajasthan. With assembly polls due in December, the political mercury in the state has shot up with allegations and counter-allegations flying thick and fast between two of the state’s top leaders.
Early this month, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the Lok Sabha MP from Jodhpur and Union minister for jal shakti, filed a criminal defamation suit against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for character assassination by calling him and his family scam-accused.
The case, filed at Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court, is the latest in the salvos— fired through words, police and court cases—between the two leaders from rival parties. And it is not only a fight for dominance over their home turf—Jodhpur—but also for the state. The fact that Shekhawat has been the most vocal BJP leader against Gehlot over the past four years apparently puts him in a position to be the frontrunner in the CM race if the BJP comes to power.
The provocation for the defamation suit was Gehlot calling Shekhawat and his family members accused in the alleged fraud in the Sanjeevani Credit Cooperative Society in which many of the 214,000-plus investors are said to have lost their money. The Union minister, who was yet to be named so by probe agency Special Operations Group, charged: “Gehlot has not only indulged in character assassination of me but also called my late mother an accused.” Standing his ground, Gehlot has said that as the home minister, he was privy to the probe reports in which Shekhawat was an accused, besides his wife, brother-in-law, father and late mother.
The CM welcomed Shekhawat’s defamation move, stating that it would catapult the issue to national attention. “How can the PM keep such a person in his cabinet? And I hope Amit Shah, who holds the portfolio of cooperatives, will intervene to ensure that poor investors get back the money that Shekhawat has taken away and sent to Ethiopia (where he has plantations),” he said, demanding that the Enforcement Directorate seize the properties of the beneficiaries of the alleged scam. Without mincing words, Gehlot said the Centre granted Shekhawat Z-plus
For a little over a week, ace rifle and pistol shooters from across the globe along with the sport’s top administrators will congregate in Bhopal for the ISSF World Cup that kicks off on March 20. The prestigious International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) tournament will be among a series of national and international sports events that Madhya Pradesh has hosted over the past two years.
Be it the pistol shooting, equestrian and women’s boxing nationals towards the end of 2022, or the women’s ITF (International Tennis Federation) tournament in January and the Khelo India Youth Games—that saw nearly 6,000 young athletes from across the country take part in 27 disciplines— in February, capital Bhopal has been buzzing with sports activities. Then, there were the national canoe sprint championship (March 2022), men’s hockey national meet (April) and junior athletics nationals (September) among the events on the city’s sports calendar last year.
Backed by government funds and state-of-the-art facilities, Madhya Pradesh—and Bhopal in particular—is fast turning into India’s sports hub. Several sports academies and stadiums have come up here in the past decade. Besides nurturing budding athletes, they have given the state a platform to host national and international events.
Inaugurating the Youth Games at Bhopal’s Tatya Tope Stadium on January 30, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had promised that “there will be no shortage of funds to promote the state’s sporting talent” while announcing Rs 5 lakh for each medal winner from MP. In the 2023-24 state budget unveiled on March 1, the allocation for sports stood at Rs 738 crore, over three times the Rs 235 crore allocated last year. (Though the sports budget for 2022-23 was later bumped up to Rs 476 crore to hold the bigticket Youth Games.)
“We saw Bhopal’s shooting
SPORTS ACADEMIES LOCATED IN BIG CITIES WILL BE CONNECTED TO FEEDER CENTRES IN DISTRICTS TO IDENTIFY AND NURTURE TALENT AT GRASSROOTS LEVEL YASHODHARA RAJE
Sports Minister, MP
infrastructure during the nationals and found it to be up to international standard,” says Sultan Singh, secretary general, National Rifle Association of India (NRAI), speaking to india today on how Bhopal bagged the coveted ISSF event that will have 325 shooters from 33 countries vying for top honours. “Based on it, we pitched the city as a possible venue for the World Cup, which was accepted by the international federation.”
The world-class infrastructure has also produced medal winners like Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, 22, a product of the Madhya Pradesh Shooting Academy and a junior world record-holder in the rifle event. Then there are trap shooters Manisha Keer, 23, and Varsha Varman, 28, who have won laurels for the country on international platforms. Also Vivek Sagar, 23, who was part of the Indian men’s hockey team that won the bronze at the 2020 Olympics. Grabbing 96 medals, including 39 gold, 30 silver and 27 bronze, the state’s athletes helped it finish third—behind only Maharashtra and Haryana—in the Youth Games.
Today, the department of sports and youth welfare is running 10 sports academies, with Bhopal alone home to six: shooting, water sports, equestrian, martial arts, men’s hockey and athletics. The women’s hockey and badminton academies have been established in Gwalior, and archery and cricket academies are in Jabalpur and Shivpuri, respectively. Equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure and top national and international coaches, these academies help identify Madhya Pradesh’s sporting talent at an early stage and provide them with stay, diet and training to excel in their discipline. Then, there are the multiple stadiums—multidiscipline and single sports, indoor and outdoor—that have come up on a massive scale, not just at the district level but at the sub-district, tehsil and block level too. With the construction of 44 more stadiums expected to get completed by the end of this year, sources in the sports department claim the number will cross 150 from the present 107.
That isn’t all. Sports minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia, who has been driving the government’s efforts, has set even more ambitious targets. “We are now looking ahead,” she says. “We will be building one indoor stadium in each of the 230 assembly segments of the state and one multidiscipline sports stadium in each of the 52 districts.” The plan is to connect sports academies located in prominent cities of MP with feeder centres located in districts, the minister explains further. “This will help identify and nurture talent at the grassroots level.”
In the new budget, the MP government has allocated Rs 149 crore for the construction of sports stadiums, Rs 130 crore for academies and Rs 349 crore for establishing infrastructure under Khelo India. This zeal and impetus can be traced back to the state’s New Sports Policy, 2005, that gave a big push to create a “healthy pool” of athletes by organising regular sports events and improving infrastructure. Close on its heels, Scindia was appointed the sports minister in December 2005. But after she got elected to the Lok Sabha in 2007, most of the initiatives came to a grinding halt, only to be revived in January 2014 when she returned at the helm.
The state’s ascent in the sporting arena has also proved to be a boon for the realty and hospitality sector in the capital city. “The number of big sporting events being held here has opened up new opportunities for the hospitality sector,” says Faiz Rashid, director of the Bhopal-based Jehan Numa Group of heritage hotels. Amid a spurt in demand for rooms to accommodate the athletes, coaches and administrators who have been landing in Bhopal for training camps and tournaments, many new guesthouses have mushroomed near the shooting range and other academies. But Bhopal’s poor air connectivity remains a major drawback, say locals. State’s athletes and coaches also often complain of delay in payments for their travel due to alleged red-tapism when it comes to the disbursal of funds allocated in the budget.
Even in the sporting arena, there’s the potential to achieve greater heights. For instance, at the National Games in 2007, MP finished overall 12th with 63 medals, of which just 12 were gold. Fifteen years later, in the latest edition held in Gujarat in 2022, the state stood seventh with 66 medals, including 20 gold—an improvement but still far below potential. Given the present momentum, Madhya Pradesh must shoot for the stars. ■