Jammu’s Sporting Disparity

The figures tabled in the Legislative Assembly are not merely statistics - they are an indictment. Kashmir's ten districts recorded more than three times the sports infrastructure expenditure of Jammu's ten districts in 2024-25, which is troubling enough. That this gap has widened so dramatically within a single year-from a difference of roughly Rs 1.18 crore in 2023-24 to a staggering Rs 17.35 crore in 2024-25-should alarm every stakeholder in the UT, from the Sports Council down to the last district sports officer. What makes these disclosures particularly disturbing is not simply the disparity in allocation but the chasm between what was released and what was actually spent. Jammu division was sanctioned Rs 32.82 crore and had Rs 26.60 crore released to it, yet managed to spend only Rs 8.01 crore - a utilisation rate that ought to embarrass every official whose desk these files crossed. Kashmir, by contrast, spent Rs 25.36 crore of the Rs 32.82 crore released to it. The result: nearly 76 per cent of the combined expenditure across both regions was recorded in Kashmir, leaving a mere 24 per cent for Jammu, despite both provinces having an identical number of districts.

Jammu district itself is perhaps the starkest case study in institutional apathy. It received the largest sanction of any single district - Rs 17.99 crore - with Rs 14.53 crore released. Yet expenditure stood at a paltry Rs 1.97 crore. No explanation has been offered. No officer has been held accountable. No corrective mechanism appears to have been triggered. This is not a minor administrative oversight; it is a systemic failure repeated across two consecutive financial years. The irony is bitter. The Jammu division has long shouldered the additional responsibility of accommodating athletes from the Valley during the harsh winter migration, when Kashmir's own facilities lie snowbound and unusable. One would expect this dual burden to translate into heightened investment and urgency in developing Jammu's sporting infrastructure. Instead, crores of sanctioned funds sit unreleased or unspent, even as players at MA Stadium continue to complain, year after year, about damaged courts, leaking roofs and crumbling facilities. At the Parade Ground in Jammu, athletes reportedly train without adequate drinking water, functional toilets or changing rooms. Against this backdrop, the non-utilisation of allocated funds is not merely unfortunate - it is unconscionable.

The process, on paper, should prevent exactly this outcome. Every department is required to submit projected infrastructure and activity expenditure at the budget preparation stage, and allocations follow only after due scrutiny. In an era of much-publicised digital governance, with expenditure tracked on online portals in real time, it defies belief that no officer flagged the under-utilisation despite multiple review mechanisms.

This controversy arrives atop existing allegations of regional favouritism in team selections. But selection disputes, however serious, are ultimately subjective. Unspent crores, released and then simply abandoned, are missing. They represent a quantifiable, documented failure of governance - one made more uncomfortable by the fact that the Minister for Youth Services and Sports himself hails from the Jammu division, a circumstance that makes such lapses all the more unexpected and demands a more searching explanation from within the department itself.

This situation comes at a time when the Prime Minister himself has been championing sport as integral to the school curriculum and as a genuine antidote to the scourge of drug abuse among youth. This is meaningless when crores intended for constructing courts, halls, and playfields remain unused in Government coffers, leaving young athletes without proper kits. It is not too late to act. The current financial year's allocation and utilisation figures must be reviewed now, not after another year has lapsed into another disappointing report card. The Administration owes Jammu's sporting fraternity - and indeed the wider public - a transparent, district-wise accounting of why funds were surrendered, who is responsible, and what safeguards will ensure this pattern of neglect is not repeated. Anything less will confirm that on the sports field, as elsewhere, some regions remain more equal than others.