But later on the AFI had written to the Ministry

requesting to allow to hold the elections in its AGM in April. "We have no issues if they want to have the elections in April along with the AGM. We have accepted it. The important thing is that the AFI has deleted the contentious clause from its constitution," he said. The Sports Secretary disclosed that the Ministry has decided to start an ambitious plan to set up one District Sports School in every district of the country to groom talented athletes. "We are setting up a District Sports School at all the 628 districts of the country. We will select 100 students in each school through competition and provide them education and sports training simultaneously. They will have to be given proper diet and training through expert coaches. Football will be a must for all the children in the schools," he said. "We have calculated that we would be spending around 1,25,000 rupees a year on each child. We will also provide each of them jobs when they become eligible after studies. It may be difficult to start these schools immediately in problem areas like the North East, Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir. But we will start this in the other more than 300 districts in the country," said Deb. "So each year we will be training more than 60,000 school children and in 10 years there will be more than six lakh talents. Out of these huge talent pool we can pick the best to represent the country in international events, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and Olympics. Our target is that in 10 years from now we can be among top 10 medal winners in the Olympics and among sports powers," he added. Deb called on the corporate sector to back sports in a big way so that the spending in sports is increased to seven to eight per cent in the next 10 years. "In all the top sporting countries in the world, the spending through sponsorship is seven to eight per cent of the GDP. But in India it is barely one per cent of the GDP. I called upon the corporate sector to increase the sponsorship so that in another 10 years the spending in sports reaches seven to eight per cent," he said.