The director of sports wants the wedding season to end at the Balewadi sports complex

Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, commonly known as Balewadi stadium, may shortly be handed over to private players for developing sports infrastructure and grooming athletes, instead of using it as a revenue-generating venue for wedding receptions and other non-sporting events.
The director of sports has recently invited interested firms with a presentation and long-term plan that would cover seven issues — venue maintenance, talent mapping, sport mapping, revenue generation, grass roots development of various sports, rural outreach and self-sustainability — put forth by the state government.A total of nine companies, including Deloitte, ILFS and some local corporates, came up with presentations and had a one-on-one closed-door meeting with authorities at Balewadi last week.
Sports minister Vinod Tawde has been repeatedly voicing his concern over the stadium — opened in 1995 and also used as the venue for the 2008 Commonwealth Games — being used for non-sporting activities, a ploy started by the earlier regime to generate additional income to cover the maintenance costs of the world-class sporting facilities. However, Tawde also admitted to loopholes and irregularities in the audit of the sports complex in that regard.
The minister approved the policy decision, which stated that the sports complex will be used for sporting events only and not for weddings hereafter. “As per the new directives of the ministry of sports and youth welfare, Pune’s Balewadi stadium will now be exclusively used for sports-related activities only. This was put in action to emphasise on the priority the department holds for sports and corresponding activities,” states vinodtawde.com, the sports minister’s website, in a recent update.
The sports complex could also be given autonomous status or be handed over to corporates who could in turn exercise corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities while developing various sports.
Narendra Sopal, joint director, sports and youth affairs, Maharashtra, confirmed the development and said the state government wants to encourage meritorious sportspersons, corporates or any firm or individual to apply wherein, if selected, the government will provide state-of-the-art facilities to them. “Nine companies out of 10 made it to the one-on-one meeting and presentation; the session was quite impressive. We will compile all the points and make a report, which will be sent to the state ministry. After that, we will issue guidelines on how to take this ahead,” Sopal told Pune Mirror.
For now, the proposal from the corporates came with two options: Leasing out the whole sports complex and leasing out each of the venues to specialised firms or qualified athletes. “We got different views on whether these venues could be put to any other use for the whole year without disturbing the sporting activities. For example, if Hockey Maharashtra decides to host tournaments here at Balewadi, they would not require the venue for more than 60 days a year. We will need to decide what could be done in the remaining 10 months,” Sopal added.
The 11 sporting venues, comprising weight lifting, boxing, athletics, swimming, badminton, table tennis, cycling, hockey, shooting, tennis and gymnastics were set up in 2008, during the Commonwealth Youth Games. The venue also houses a fully equipped gym, science centre and warm-up tracks. Apart from shooting, badminton, tennis and the main athletic stadium, the other venues are hardly utilised.
Under the earlier government and former sports minister Padmakar Valvi, some of the venues were given up for private functions and weddings to generate revenue which would partly cover the cost of maintenance. In the process, some of the venues were damaged, while others needed timely maintenance. The burden of maintaining the sporting infrastructure became huge as there were irregularities in accounting and audits, which also eventually surfaced. The same is being probed through an internal inquiry.
In a story titled ‘Balewadi range is failing all its shooting stars’ (November 15, 2016), Pune Mirror had reported on the dismal state of affairs of the shooting range, following international shooter Heena Sidhu’s tweet, expressing disappointment.
It now remains to be seen if Balewadi stadium will rise like a phoenix again with corporate aid.