Khelo India's Centre of Excellence Assam and Meghalaya included among 6 new states

NEW DELHI: The Sports Ministry is set to establish the Khelo India Centre of Excellence (KISCE) in Assam and five other states, under the ministry's flagship Khelo India scheme. Besides Assam, five other states of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim have been identified in the second leg.

Speaking about the decision to set up the KISCEs, Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Kiren Rijiju said, "These 6 new Khelo India State Center of Excellence is yet another step towards building a robust sports ecosystem in the country. This will help India's pursuit of excellence at the Olympics in the coming years. We are making sure that we add more state-of-the-art centres to the growing list, which will ensure that athletes proficient in a certain sport can be given the highest level of training and that these training centres provide the best facilities in the country."

Earlier this year, the Ministry had identified eight centres including Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland in the first leg. Their existing centres will be upgraded into Khelo India State Centre of Excellence (KISCE). These centres have been shortlisted based on the training facilities available in priority sports, infrastructure facilities and champions produced by the centre. The sports facilities were selected by each State and Union Territory, which was asked to identify the best sports infrastructure available with them or their agencies or any eligible agencies that could be developed into world-class sporting facilities.

In order to upgrade the existing centre to the KISCE, the government will extend a 'Viability Gap Funding' in sports science and technology support for sports disciplines practiced at the centre and also bridge the gaps in requirement of sports equipment, expert coaches and high performance managers. The support extended will be to a maximum of 3 Olympic sports per center, though support can be extended in sports science and allied fields in other sporting disciplines being run in the centre.

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