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Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi , Nov. 29

APART from being industry leaders, what else is common between Mr Rahul Bajaj, Mr Anand Mahindra and Mr A.C. Muthiah? Well, along with the likes of P.T. Usha and Kapil Dev, they are all members of the Governing Council of the National Sports Development Fund set up by the Sports Ministry.

While Mr Mahindra and Mr Muthiah are members by virtue of being the President of CII and FICCI, respectively, Mr Bajaj is a member in his personal capacity. Both CII and FICCI have signed MoUs with the Government for promoting sports.

However, what again appears to be common with the captains of the industry is their lack of interest to initiate effective public-private partnership in developing sports infrastructure in the country. This is clear from the fact that while Kapil Dev has donated Rs 1.21 crore to the fund, none of the industrialists has come forward. And this, when the sports fund enjoys 100 per cent tax exemption.

As a result, a sum of Rs 9 crore allocated in the current year's Budget as the Centre's share in equity participation for building State sports academies through the joint venture route is most likely to be returned by the Ministry, a senior official in the Sports Ministry told Business Line.

It was only in the Budget for the current fiscal that the facility for setting up sports academies through the joint venture route was provided for, for the first time. According to the provisions laid down, the Union Government is to have a 24 per cent equity stake while the respective State Governments will hold 25 per cent. The remaining 51 per cent stake is to be picked up by the private partner who will also enjoy total management control.

"So all that the private sector needed to chip in was only a little more than Rs 18 crore and run its own show for which the Centre and the States would have given another Rs 18 crore. But not a single proper proposal has come up till now, except some discussions with four State governments. In all probability, this (allocation) will remain unutilised and will go back," the official said

According to Ministry officials, "The private sector's attitude is surprising. They are neither ready to donate money to the fund, nor ready to take money from the Government and run their own State academies. This year till now, we have not received a single paisa donation in the fund, nor a single proposal seeking funds from our corpus for setting up State sporting academies."

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