Shimla: To meet the infrastructural needs of varied sporting disciplines the newly-elected Himachal chapter of the Indian Olympics Association stated that about Rs 40 crore would be spent over the next five years to upgrade sporting activities in the state.

Newly-elected president Jagat Prakash Nadda, who is also forest minister, said he was elected unanimously at a meeting on Sunday at Bilaspur. The elections were conducted peacefully after Ram Lal Thakur’s, the former president and a former minister, bid to disrupt the process failed and he refused to participate in the meet, Nadda said.

The new office-bearers, he added, would do everything to revamp sports infrastructure in the state. Nadda said the Olympics association would adopt the model of HP Cricket Association for promoting sports.

MP Anurag Thakur, who in addition to being the president of Himachal Cricket Association has been made general secretary of Olympics Association, said the Board of Cricket Control of India has already committed to spend Rs 25 crore for establishing a stadium in each district of the state.

An addition to this Rs 15 crore would be pooled in from state resources as well as from corporate sector, which would add into a Rs 40-crore corpus that would be spent on upgrading sporting infrastructure in the state, he said. The cricketing infrastructure would be also used for promoting other sports disciplines, he said.

“For a start, the Himachal Olympics Association would hold a Shimla Olympics Festival in October that would instil a competitive spirit,” Thakur said. He said people like Vidya Stokes, president of Himachal Women’s Hockey Association, and KPS Gill, president of Himachal Men’s Hockey Association, had been on these bodies for decades without having even put up a single astroturf field in the state for promoting hockey.

There are 14 state sports associations including boxing, judo, basketball, athletics, volleyball, kabaddi, hockey, gymnastics, shooting, taekwando, badminton that were affiliated with the state Olympics body