Existing sports facilities in ruins, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation wants more

AHMEDABAD: While the state government and city authorities have plans to set up international-standard sports facilities to host the 2036 Olympics, the sports facilities that have come up in the last decade are rotting due to the civic authorities' apathy.
Ironically, while sports facilities such as swimming pools, skating rinks, volleyball and basketball courts that cost around a hundred crore are shut for years, the civic body has planned more facilities with much greater expense.
One defunct facility is the swimming pool in Navrangpura, which has been shut for the last decade due to lack of maintenance. The pool is now almost full of debris. The skating rink costing Rs 1 crore in Juna Vadaj near MP ni Chaali has started resembling ruins of ancient Roman arenas. Similarly, the skating rink in Ghodasar has been closed for two years.
Sources said ten such facilities built in the last decade by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) are now defunct or have not opened for the public at all. AUDA built volleyball-basketball courts at Bopal garden at a cost of Rs 4.5 crore. The garden and courts were handed over to AMC four and a half years ago but the courts have never been opened to the public.
In the last decade, AMC sanctioned Rs 163.34 crore sports facilities in the city and by 2021-22 the civic body claims to have spent Rs 100.34 crore.
In 2017-18, AMC planned to upgrade 14 swimming pools at a cost of Rs 20 crore. Under this project, the civic body claimed it would develop an Olympics-size pool in Sabarmati TP Scheme 23 and build new swimming pools in Chandkheda, Vastral and Ramol-Hathijan. The AMC sanctioned Rs 4.18 crore for building swimming pools in 2018-19. The AMC has upgraded 14 pools and built one in Vastral while two in Chandkheda and Ramol-Hathijan are being built.
In 2019-20, AMC announced plans to set up 40 single and double tennis courts in areas such as Bodakdev, Thaltej, Gota, Paldi and Memnagar and sanctioned Rs 10 crore for this. Of these, 20 courts have been built but AMC has not found an agency to operate and maintain them and they have not been opened for the public. AMC scrapped the plan for building the remaining 20 courts.
The civic body has started building a sports complex in Vastral at a cost of Rs 59 crore. The complex has an athletics track, football ground, four tennis courts, badminton court, basketball court, and five table tennis courts. The AMC also has plans of setting up a similar sports complex in Gota at an expense of Rs 59 crore.