Vandalization of National Stadium, Babus usurp residential facilities

Worst fears have come true. Sports is secondary even in stadiums. Huge infrastructure created in the name of Commonwealth Games are not being converted into cradles of sports, but fast becoming monuments of babudom. Sports facilities are being usurped by the notorious coterie of babus.

We in www.stick2hockey.com are sad to break the news that the whole Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports will shortly be shifted to National Stadium, where we have three synthetic turfs.

The sporting atmosphere of the stadium is soon going to be of ‘noting’ atmosphere, the game babus play well.

Instead of putting up Academies, allowing national players to stay in the 100-odd rooms built around all three sides of the National stadium, the reverse is happening. The behemoth bogey of Sports Ministry, which is now in the Shastri Bhawan, will shift to Irwin Amphitheatre, as our glorious Dhyan Chand Stadium was known originally.

As a death knell to sports, to start with, the main gates of the national stadium, which has been receiving boys till today’s forenoon under ‘Come and Play’ scheme, has been closed. These young boys won’t see Dhyan Chand’s face on entering the stadium as was the case till now, but will take a long detour to enter the practice pitch which incidentally is located immediately next to the main entrance.

All vehicle entries, player entries have been closed, the majestic main gates now sport winding chains and big locks.

Before renovation for the Commonwealth Games, the stadium had two academies, Air India and Punjab and National Bank. They were asked to shift to facilitate renovation. About 80-100 boys of these Academies used to stay in the stadium, board and lodge, play on the turf on all the times.

Now, we have three turf instead of two, but the Academies have already been denied their rightful place.

Now we will no longer spot aspiring young hockey talents proudly state they are staying at the National Stadium, and how they build their hockey career in this historic premise.

But will have unending wave of Under Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, PAs, APs, typists; each of these great splinter Secretaries having their own set up under what is known as white-elephant Sports Ministry.

The main entrance has been made to look like a Tihar Jail already; those players who used to commute by walk from nearby bus stops, have to now walk almost a kilometer to enter the stadium turf from other Gates.

What a pity a turf that lies at the entrance of the stadium have to now be accessed this way!

The Ministry should have shifted to Nehru Stadium, which is vary vast now after CWG, or to a corner of the city, which normally happens in big cities if offices are to go for new buildings.

But, since Sports Authority of India built its own building and moved therein, there has been heartburn in the Ministry of their ‘sub-standard’ office, which no doubt the Shastri Bhawan is.

Making use of the peculiar situation of hockey being orphaned in the sense that both HI and IHF are fighting in the courts last three years, the Ministry had made use of the vacuum — making its space out of vacuum.

This is a cunning move to shift the Ministry to National Stadium, its vandalization of a glorious and traditional sporting edifice.

Both PNB and Air India wanted to come back, but they were quoted a prize that if they have to pay up, these two institutions have to nearly sell off themselves!!

The civil society should rise again and prevent this great disservice to hockey from being perpetrated.