Patna: The 18th National Inter District Junior Athletics Meet (NIDJAM) will be held at the Patliputra Sports Complex here from February 9 to 12.
For the first time, the Athletics Federation of India has selected Bihar for the four-day meet to be organised by the Government of Bihar. According to Raveendran Sankaran, director general of the Sports Development Authority of Bihar, the meet will begin on February 9.
The meet is being organised in collaboration with the Department of Art, Culture and Youth Department of Government of Bihar and Sports Authority Development Authority of Bihar (SDAB).
Selected athletes from every district of the country will participate in the meet. For all the boys and girls athletes coming from all over the country to participate in the meet, separate elaborate arrangements were made for their boarding, lodging, and food. For girls it is arranged at Pataliputra Sports Complex, and for boys it is arranged at OP Shah Community Hall, Malsalami, Patna City. Arrangements have been made for experts and delegates coming from outside to stay in different hotels.
About 600 players from 38 districts of Bihar are participating in it. At the end of the meet, a 15-member selection committee will select about 250 athletes. They will be trained and selected for national and international championships in future.
The main objective is to promote athletics in all the 732 districts of the country and to establish it as the most prominent and biggest sport. Athletic meets are being organized at the district level for boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 16 in all districts across the country. Successful participants are selected for inter-district meet at the national level.
The goal of this competition is to make the country proud by selecting talented players from every corner of the country at an early age and making them champions in national and international meets under the guidance of skilled coaches.
The National Inter-District Junior Athletics Meet was started in 2003. Since 2003, this meet has been organised successfully 17 times. Many successful athletes in this meet went on to win medals at national and international-level championships. Among them are Mandeep Kaur in the 400m race, Navneet Dhillon in the discus throw, Dutee Chand in the 100m and 200m, Neeraj Chopra in the javelin throw, and Hima Das in the 400m.
