Gandhinagar: Gujarat government has taken an important decision to promote sports and games along with education, aiming at the all-round development of children. In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Developed India-2047’ and the New Education Policy-2020, government primary, secondary and higher secondary schools of the state will be provided Rs. 34,483 sports kits will be provided at a cost of more than Rs 29.45 crore.

The main objective of the state government is to increase interest in sports among children. Under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and Education Minister Dr. This decision taken under the guidance of Kuberbhai Dindor and Minister of State for Education Prafulbhai Pansheriya will lead to physical, mental, social, emotional and cognitive development of children. Through sports, children will develop skills like union spirit, cooperation, self-initiative, self-reliance, self-discipline, responsibility and citizenship, which will also help in achieving the goals of ‘Fit India Movement’.

This sports kit includes 30 types of sports equipment for children, which include: carrom board, cricket bats of different sizes, badminton and shuttlecocks, football, volleyball, handball, discus, shot put rubber, javelin, chess set, skipping rope, hurdle set, marking cones set, relay baton set, saucer cones set, tennis court, cricket stump. It includes equipment like sets, tennis balls (soft and hard), stop watch, air hand pump etc.

This sports kit will be prepared per school and distributed to cluster classes in every district of the state. These include Zone-1 (Aravalli, Banaskantha, Mehsana, Patan, Sabarkantha), Zone-2 (Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Botad, Kutch, Kheda, Morbi, Surendranagar), Zone-3 (Amreli, Bhavnagar, Devbhoomi Dwarka, Gir-Somnath, Jamnagar, Junagadh, Porbandar, Rajkot, Rajkot Municipal Corporation), Zone-4. A total of more than 34,400 sports kits will be allotted in the districts (Anand, Chhota-Udepur, Dahod, Gandhinagar, Mahisagar, Panchmahal) and Zone-5 (Bharuch, Narmada, Navsari, Surat, Surat Municipal Corporation, Tapi, Dangs, Vadodara, Vadodara Municipal Corporation and Valsad).

Earlier, the Department of Total Education Abhiyan used to give grant to schools to purchase sports equipment in the year 2022. However, this time to maintain more transparency, ensure availability of proper quality kits and to provide more equipment to the children at lower cost, sports kits will be provided directly to the government schools of the state by Samachar Shiksha. With this initiative, thousands of children of the state will get an opportunity to progress in the field of sports and their future will become brighter.