Haryana Schools’ union urge CM to provide sports nurseries to private institutions

The Private School Sangh, a union representing over 5,000 schools in Haryana, requested Chief Minister Nayab Saini on Tuesday to provide sports nurseries to private schools, as athletes training in private schools are seeing their hopes dashed and disappointment prevail.

State president of the federation, Satyawan Kundu, in a press statement, said that not a single sports nursery had been given to private schools, which was a blatant discrimination against the players of private schools.

“The applications were invited for sports nurseries in March, and thousands of private and government schools and panchayats had applied for it. Based on this, the sports nurseries were inspected at the district level, and the list of eligible nurseries was sent to the Director at the Sports Department’s head office in Panchkula. After this, 868 sports nurseries were given to government and panchayat schools, but even after six months, not a single sports nursery has been given to private schools,” said Mr. Kundu, adding that the government had promised to give 2,000 sports nurseries this time.

In such a situation, there is disappointment among the 25,000 players in private schools, he said.

Mr Kundu stated that a maximum of 25 players are enrolled in each sports nursery, and the Sports Department provides ₹1,500 per month as diet money to children aged between 8 and 14 years and ₹2,000 per month to children aged between 15 and 19.

“Now, due to the private schools not having sports nurseries, the players training in them will not be able to get the diet money. While Haryana’s sports policy is meant to encourage players, and this time the government has announced to increase the diet money, this announcement will be of no use to the players when private sports nurseries have not been started,” said Mr. Kundu.

Sports Department principal secretary Navdeep Virk told The Hindu that approval from the finance department was awaited for the proposal to increase the number of sports nurseries to 2,000 this year, resulting in a delay in allotment to private schools.

“We had planned to increase the number of sports nurseries from 1,500 to 2,000 this year, and the proposal for the same was sent to the finance department. The existing nurseries, however, were preferably allotted to government schools, panchayats, and government coaches, as students in private schools have greater access to resources. Since the approval from the finance department has been received, the private schools will also be given nurseries soon,” Mr. Virk said.

He added that the Sports Department had also introduced biometric attendance for the athletes from October 1 at the sports nurseries to curb fraudulent activities.