CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has allocated a subsidy of Rs 1.8 billion for the construction of a world-class sports village spread across 175 acres of land, which is owned by Manonmaniam Sundaranar University near Tirunelveli, Press Trust of India reports.
The Tamil Nadu Sports Development Authority and the university will collaborate to build a swimming pool of Olympic standards in the sports village. The project is scheduled to be completed in six months’ time.
State higher education minister KP Anbazhagan laid the foundation stone for the swimming pool, which reportedly costs Rs 50 million. This would be the second such pool, next only to the one at Velachery in Chennai.
The development comes weeks after state chief minister K Palaniswami pledged that his government will be funding two massive projects. One of them is a world class sports academy at the Tamil Nadu Physical Education and Sports University campus in Chennai at an estimated budget of Rs 100 million and the other being a District Sports Complex in Vellore costing Rs 173.5 million.
The state’s interest in the welfare of sports is also evident in its Rs 5 million grant for the recently held World Junior Squash Championships in Chennai as well as announcing cash incentives in millions for all Commonwealth Games medallists from the country.
