Believe it or not, the ground reality is that the youth in Tral area of Pulwama district have been waiting for last three decades for a stadium to come up but that never happened. During these thirty odd years, two ministers visited the spot where the stadium could have been built. One minister announced sanction of six lakh rupees for the stadium and the second one, more frugal, announced allocation of five crore rupees. Big promises, big publicity and big disappointment, that is the tale of Tral stadium. Revenue Department identified 600 kanals in the first instance and later on added another 600 kanals making the campus of ambitious stadium spread over 1200 kanals of land. Such a spacious stadium could have been a model stadium if any Government functionary concerned with sports activities had shown even an iota of interest.
Pulwama is infested with militancy being one of the three districts of South Kashmir where militants are active. Kashmiri unemployed youth are at the centre of militancy. This is what the Government and Kashmir observers say. The Government has numerous schemes up its sleeve to engage the youth to learn skills and earn a livelihood. That is fine and thousands of Kashmiri youth have taken advantage of the facility. But we cannot remain content with just extending that facility to the youth and thinking that it is enough. No, the youth have natural tendency for sports and extra-curricular activities. After all they have young blood and they want to utilize their energy in something that gives them relief and satisfaction.
Sports have great impact on the life of the youth. They want to demonstrate their physical prowess and at the same time derive pleasure out of it. The unfortunate thing is that our town planers have never paid sufficient attention to the requirement of the youth by not providing them playing grounds particularly in the proximity of towns and cities. About 2500 young boys in nearly 121 villages in Tral area have been yearning for a stadium for too long a time and the Government, despite no paucity of funds, as claimed by the local MLA, is not obliging the youth by providing them with the stadium. It is an irony that knowing that the youth are deeply interested in sports, the land is available and the funds are also available, yet the Government is unwilling to respond to the urges of the youth. It is inexcusable.
Of late cricket has become a very popular and exciting game for our youth. They watch the cricket matches between various teams of the world and they evince keen interest in everything related to it. Why should not the Government harness this potential and expect our youth to prove their merit as sportsmen and sportswomen to find their rightful place on national level. Let us say with full confidence that our youth have great talent to shine in the area of sports and other creative activities. But they are deprived of facilities from like playing ground and logistics failing which they are forced to divert attention and maybe towards inadvisable activities.
We would like to impress upon the Government and more particularly the Department of Sports to sort out the hurdles in the way of taking up filling and other works at the identified area and see to it that the stadium at Tral becomes functional. How sad that two Government Departments should have come to loggerheads about the ownership of the identified land and thus become the cause for inordinate delay in building the stadium. By indulging in mutual acrimony they are spoiling the youth and dampening their sports spirit. This should not happen.
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