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  Sahid Nagar indoor hall remains idle
20 Jul 2007
 

Up-gradation of the State-owned gymnasium-cum-indoor hall at Sahid Nagar, Bhubaneswar has given a much needed boost to the city’s infrastructure facilities for sports. But delay in the use of new facilities, especially the wooden flooring and the lighting system has reduced the importance of the good work done by the Sports Department. When inaugurated earlier this week, players and organisers in badminton and table tennis evinced overwhelming interest to take advantage of it. But they were disappointed as the Department had not prepared a guideline for the users. Of course, both Sports Minister Debasis Nayak and Department Secretary S C Pattnaik assured that such a guideline would be ready early next month. But looking at past instances, one doubts whether the authorities would be able to live up to their promise. But this is certain that till the introduction of the guideline, the indoor hall would remain idle.

 

Meanwhile, competition has hotted up between badminton and table tennis fraternities to take full or maximum control over the hall. The former wants the facility to be used exclusively to run a regular coaching centre in badminton. ‘‘Till date, city had just one public court with wooden flooring at Unit-I indoor hall, where National panel coach Manoj Sabat was struggling to groom around 30 youngsters. But around 70 more shuttlers had no place to play. Hence, there are more reasons that the Sahid Nagar indoor hall should be fully devoted to badminton,’’ says Mahesh Mohanty, father of up-coming shuttler Monalisa. ‘‘The 50-feet-high roof at Sahid Nagar indoor hall makes it ideal for badminton. If used as a regular coaching centre, it can produce international-level shuttlers in a couple of years,’’ opined Sanjay Pattnaik, father of State junior champion Sarthak Pattnaik. ‘‘Orissa’s ace international shuttler Sanat Mishra died a disappointed man as the government failed to provide him infrastructure facility to launch an academy. It would be fitting tribute to him if the Sahid Nagar indohall is converted into a badminton academy in the memory of Sanat Mishra,’’ felt former State senior champion Bibhas Parida. On the other hand, Bhubaneswar Table Tennis Association (BTTA) wants that it should be allowed to use at least half of the modernised indoor hall to keep its regular coaching programme going as before. Three more table tennis bodies have also applied to share the facility there.

  It must be mentioned here that since inception, both Sahid Nagar and Unit-I indoor halls were being equally shared by badminton and table tennis. But the government has provided additional facilities for table tennis at Kalinga Stadium. When the Sahid Nagar hall was closed for nearly 18 months for upgradation, the shuttlers suffered a lot. Now badminton seems more justified in its demand to get full or larger allotment of the Sahid Nagar indoor hall. The Sports Department should carefully work out guidelines for the users and extract maximum utility value of the indoor hall.
   

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