PATIALA: Sportspersons created a ruckus outside the office of Punjabi University’s finance officer here on Wednesday to protest against the authorities for not releasing grants to the sports department.
They claimed that a number of them would not be able to compete in a national competition next month because of this. Headed by a football coach in the university, the players gheraoed finance officer R S Arora’s office and threw chairs lying there. While officials in the office claimed that players broke some chairs, they denied the charge.
The players were angry after the finance department denied a payment of Rs 61,000 to the sports department that had prepared a team of six boys and six girls to be sent for the All-India Inter-University Cross Country Championship to be held from September 30 to October 4 in Karnataka.
University director of sports Gurdeep Kaur said the finance department had upheld a payment of around Rs 7 lakh meant for coaches and managers who accompany the students to the tournaments and about Rs 7 lakh meant for inter-college games. She said the finance department also denied Rs 61,000 to the varsity team which is going to participate in the cross-country championship.
FO Arora said the players and sports department officials were creating a ruckus unnecessarily and threatening his staff. He said he was not present in the office otherwise they might have attacked him.
