Karti Chidambaram urges Centre not to pitch for hosting Olympics, says it will drain country's resources

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Karti Chidambaram on Monday urged the government not to pitch for hosting the Olympics, saying it will be a "drain" on the country's resources.

Participating in the discussion on India's preparedness for the Paris Olympics in the Lok Sabha, he said it is better to use that money for the development of athletes and not get into "ego" projects.

"Please do not host the Olympics. Greece and Brazil conducted the Olympics and faced severe hardships after conducting (it). It is a great drain," the Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu) MP said.

India has evinced an interest to bid for the 2036 Olympics.

He also said India has won a total of 35 medals in all the Olympics put together, but a small country like Croatia has won 41 medals.

He suggested the government to broad-base sports participation and access to sports facilities.

"Make sports a compulsory subject in board exams and make sure that participation in sports is compulsory. Until and unless sports is compulsory in this educational system, which is so examination-oriented, it is very difficult to broad-base sports," he added.

There are many schools which do not have playgrounds, and such schools should not be recognised, he said.

"If we do these two things, sports will be broad-based," the Congress leader said, adding there is a need to focus on elite sportsmen and allocate lot more funds to sportsmen for travelling, training and hiring coaches of their own choice" he said.

Rakibil Hussain (INC) suggested the government to make carrom a priority-list game.

M S Kang (AAP) said sports associations at present are run by people who are not into sports and this needs to be changed.

He also suggested to identify talent at the school level and provide them training and proper diet.

N K Premachandran (RSP) too emphasised hunting sports talent at the school level.