Sports Minister Jitendra Singh dissatisfied with CWG, Asian Games preparations

NEW DELHI: Sports Minister Jitendra Singh was far from impressed as he took stock of India's preparations for next year's Commonwealth and Asian Games in a meeting with SAI officials here and expressed dissatisfaction with the progress made so far.

"The Union Minister of State (I/C) for Youth Affairs and Sports Shri Jitendra Singh held a meeting on August 5 with the officers of SAI to review the preparation for the Commonwealth Games 2014 at Glasgow and Asian Games 2014 at Incheon, Seoul," the Sports Ministry said in a statement.

"During the meeting, Shri Jitendra Singh expressed his dissatisfaction at the fact that only a handful of National Sports Federations had given a detailed training programme for the probable medal winners identified for the games," it added.

Singh gave several directions to the Sports Authority of India officials, including the setting up of a steering committee headed by Sports Secretary P K Deb to oversee the preparations.

"The Minister directed that a Chief Coach along with his support staff be appointed for each discipline and their team should be entrusted with the responsibility for coaching of probables," the release said.

"The Minister directed that a Steering Committee headed by Secretary (Sports) be set up and meet every week to review the progress of training sportsperson in each discipline by rotation. This system would hold till the conclusion of Commonwealth Games.

"It was also decided that top-up training needs of individual sportsperson would be identified and be funded from the NSDF," it added.