On the occasion of National Sports Day 2023, Hon’ble Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Shri Anurag Singh Thakur launched the third edition of the Fit India Quiz, among other initiatives, at an event at the JLN Stadium here on Tuesday. The event was attended by almost 500 school children from various schools in New Delhi as well as several elite athletes and officials from the MYAS, SAI and the National Sports Federations.
The Hon’ble Minister also launched an Information booklet on Sports Infrastructure Projects sanctioned under the Khelo India Scheme as well as launched a National Sports Federations portal, while also felicitating the 4x400m men’s relay team, fresh after creating an Asian record at the World Athletics Championships held at Budapest.
Addressing the event, Shri Thakur mentioned, “The Wizard of hockey Major Dhyan Chand gave us three consecutive Olympic gold medals in hockey in 1928, 1932, and 1936. This is a fitting day for tribute to this great maestro and I’m happy to observe that over the years, coaches and athletes have also played a big role to take this sporting revolution forward. Coaches and athletes play a big role.
“There are 3526 events happening today across India and that’s a testament of the road to which we have come today. This is an unbelievable phase for Indian sports. In 60 years, there were only 18 medals at the World University Games. This year itself, we won 26 medals in the tournament. Not only that, across all sports, be it Praggnanandha in Chess to Antim Panghal in wrestling and Aditi Gopichand Swami in archery, we are getting phenomenal results. In the World Athletics Championships Budapest too, our 4x400m relay team gave a great display, along with Parul Chaudhary as well as our evergreen Neeraj Chopra, who has not got gold in every possible high scale international competition in the sport,” the Hon’ble Minister added.
Following two successful editions of the Fit India Quiz, the 3rd edition was also announced. It is India’s biggest sports and fitness quiz competition for school students featuring total prize money of Rs 3.25 crores. Commenting on the Fit India Quiz, Shri Thakur said, “I was amazed to see that students from the Tenga valley of Arunachal participated in the Fit India Quiz, along with remote locations in Andaman, Sikkim and so on. They were the top teams in the quiz.”
The National Sports Federations portal launched on Tuesday is in line with the Government of India’s vision for Digital India, for ensuring ease of business and good governance. It is a unified online portal for the NSFs which shall be a single window system for processing of annual renewal of recognition of NSFs, elections of National Sports Federations etc.
This will do away with the existing system of physical mode of submission of documents by NSFs and examination of the same by the Union Sports Ministry. The online portal will also be ensuring better coordination among the Department of Sports and the National Sports Federations.