Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today sought co-operation from Sports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal for building a state-of-the-art hockey and football academies in Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur respctively, which produced great Olympians at one point of time.
The CM also underscored the need for setting up Center of Excellence for Martial Arts in Sri Anandpur Sahib, so that the traditional games of Punjab could get a big boost.
Badal also urged the sports ministry to consider a total revamp of the National Institute of Sports (Patiala) which is only a shadow of its old and glorious days.
Badal requested Sonowal to see if a few more foreign coaches could be appointed in order to provide the sportspersons from the state with modern coaching techniques.
Sonowal assured Badal that the Union Government would make every effort to promote sports in the state so as to wipe out the curse of drug addiction from Punjab.
He also said that the NIS (Patiala) was the leading institute of sports in the country and now the Union government was adding a zing to it by expediting the process to open National Institute of Sports (Coaching) in it at a cost of Rs 200 crore.
