DJ Venkatesh
Diglipur, Dec 20: The Government is holding Diglipur Vikas Mela every year at Vivekanada Stadium at Diglipur. The sports aspirant youths are now opposing use of this stadium for the mela.
In this regard the local sports persons/ aspirants wrote a letter to the Lt. Governor to intervene in the matter and cancel holding of mela at this stadium and hold the same at Navin Nagar where the land was allotted for this type of programmes many years ago.
As per the youths, organizing mela, causes large scale damages to the ground and it takes months to repair the ground as the nails and other leftovers remain inside the ground causing threat to sports persons.
Mostly all nearby schools hold their Annual Sports in this stadium due to lack of any other ground. Apart from this, local youths, Youth Clubs and Panchayats organize many tournaments like cricket, football, Kabaddi, Volleyball in this ground every year.
Moreover during the Lt. Governor visit to Diglipur last month the Pramukh Diglipur demanded fund for the development of the land for the Vikas Mela and other programmes. Since last two years the organizers assures to develop the land at Navin Nagar but failed.
Due to probable CBSE board exams, the Islands Tourism Festival(ITF) which was organised every year in January has been rescheduled to April.
The general public are now demanding to organize the Mela in the same dates of Port Blair ITF so that the artisans who come to Port Blair from mainland can perform in Diglipur mela in same period and the general public can also witness the events.
Moreover maximum programs performed during this mela are performed by the school students. So their study would be definitely affected by organizing mela during the month of January.
About more than Rs10Lakhs each has been spent for developing Play Ground in each panchayat namely R.K Gram, Madhupur, Radhanagar, and others in Diglipur on the demand of respective Pradhan, and public..
Many years old forest trees have been cut down and earth has been leveled under MGNREGA in each Panchayat,
But Still there are no play ground for school sports, and village functions
So the money has been wasted and divived among the public.
Critical land location beside Laxmipur Gram Pnachayat has been sanctioned for Play ground, which has many bamboo plantation, if cut down people will be deprived of bamboo in future.