The practice of dividing money and releasing it to various sports academies in the state has been found to be an unhealthy trend and the government is now keen to establish an ‘Elite Academy for Sports’ under the State Sports Council to achieve greater cohesion, said Forests-Sports-Cinema Minister K B Ganesh Kumar in the Assembly on Tuesday.
“Many sportspersons have started their own academies and the government had also provided financial assistance for them.
However, the government has decided not to provide separate assistance to such academies hereafter,” the minister said, unyielding to the pleas of Dominic Presentation MLA (Congress) to grant assistance for at least two years to the Mercykuttan Academy.
The MLA had said though assistance was given to the Mercykuttan Academy in the past two years and some more assistance would be more helpful.
However, the minister agreed to consider the request of Dominic Presentation to allot a plot to construct a house for Ignatius Sylvester, the captain of the Kerala team which bagged the Santosh trophy in 2004.
“The allotment of five cents of land to him is under the active consideration of the government”, he said.
The minister also said that the State Government had recommended to the Centre to bestow former Indian captain V P Satyan with the Arjuna award posthumously.