More than 1/3rd of sports coaches post vacant: Parliament Panel

New Delhi: Calling for a fresh thinking to broad base sports in the country, a parliamentary panel has recommended involving private and corporate sectors for developing sports infrastructure, even as it voiced concerns about more than one-third of coaches' posts lying vacant.

In its report tabled in parliament on Thursday, the parliamentary standing committee on human resource development "expressed serious concern over 544 posts of coaches, accounting for 36 per cent of the total sanctioned 1524 coaches, lying vacant."    

The panel said it has conveyed to departments concerned to fill up the vacancies expeditiously.

To enable effective interface between the needs and aspirations of budding athletes and the administrative system for bringing best results, the Committee recommended appointment of an eminent sportsperson or sports administrator as the CEO in the General Council of the Khelo India Scheme to oversee the implementation of the scheme by being more sensitive to the problems and needs of the athletes, it suggested.

The panel further recommended that private educational institutions with quality sports infrastructure should be identified and developed as 'Model Residential Sports schools or Centers of Excellence' for sports to nurture children academically also, besides developing their sports talent.

Emphasising that basic education should be imparted to the identified sports talent, the panel said that promotion of sports is not feasible in isolation.

"In this regard, the Committee referred to 893 identified sports persons, accounting for 59 per cent of the total 1518 selected in 2018 for further training refusing to join training institutions due to lack of integrated education facilities available in such centres," the Rajya Sabha secretariat said in a statement, citing the report.

Elaborating on various elements of a public-private-partnership model, the panel recommended involving private and corporate sectors for mobilising required resources for creation of infrastructure and accrediting private educational institutions with quality infrastructure for training of identified sports talent.

he report was formed by a 31-member committee after reviewing the implementation of Modi government's flagship 'Khelo India' scheme.