%20filed%20by%20V.R.%20Beedu%20and%20Ashwini)
The facilities provided to athletes in Bengaluru are inadequate. A public interest litigation (PIL) filed by V.R. Beedu and Ashwini Nachappa, both international athlete coaches along with some athletes have complaints that athletes are not allowed to use the stadium as there are matches held for the JSW Bengaluru Football Club.
“The population of the city is rising; we need more synthetic tracks in order to train. We do not get enough facilities, apart from SAI campus and Kanteerava Stadium, we don’t have synthetic tracks,” said Anush Reddy, State Runner at SAI Campus.
Further, the State Government has planned to take over the Kanteerava stadium from the control of Bengaluru Football Club (BFC) once the lease gets over and hand its charge to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for maintenance and supervision.
“We have facilities for the athletes but not enough in order to get medals in Asian Games and Commonwealth games. We are short of 5-6 synthetic tracks in the city. We just have two main synthetic tracks, one is Kanteerava Stadium and another one is SAI campus inside Bengaluru University campus said Arvind Kumar,” athletics coach at SAI campus in the Bengaluru University campus.
There are only three synthetic tracks which are Sports Authority of India (SAI) campus in the Bengaluru University campus in Nagarbhavi, Kanteerava Stadium and one in Sports school campus in Vidya Nagar which is very less for the rising number of talents in the city.
“There are fewer tracks and many athletes in Bengaluru. You need more number of coaches because there are fewer coaches to train the athletes. We have many athletes here, but most of them drop out because of fewer coaches and lesser facilities,” said Poornashri Jayakumar, a State Runner.
According to Karnataka State Sports Policy, the central government assigns money to the state government for sports but it doesn’t seems like its being used for the development of athletics and the athletes in Bengaluru city.
