In his mission to promote sports and sportspersons of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has launched the One District One Sport (ODOS) scheme on the lines of the highly successful One District One Product (ODOP) scheme of the government.
The scheme serves the two interrelated objectives of the government -- promoting sports culture and keeping the younger generation healthy in the state and providing a platform for sportspersons to nurture their talents and skills in order to take part in prestigious national and international championships and win medals.
Under ODOS scheme, one sport will be identified in each of the 75 districts of UP and necessary steps will be taken to find district-wise sport-specific talents and hone their skills in order to enable them to represent in the district, state, national and international level tournaments and championships.
Since Deoria, Maharajganj, Azamgarh, Chandauli and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's hometown Gorakhpur in Purvanchal have a golden history in wrestling, the government has made it the ODOS here. Many wrestlers from here have even hoisted the tricolour at national and international championships.
Even in this era of cricket, many of the akhadas here still remain nurseries of wrestlers. Nagpanchami is a big day for wrestlers to try their best in the sport. Under the patronage of Yogi Adityanath, a large wrestling event has been taking place in the Gorakhnath temple on this day for decades. It is noteworthy that Haryana has given the maximum number of medal winning wrestlers to the country and the district of Baghpat, adjacent to Haryana also has wrestling as its ODOS.
With the consent of the Central government, sports of 10 districts have also been changed to include them in the ODOS scheme. In the Khelo India Centre of all these districts, the talents of players are being honed under the supervision of skilled coaches. The rest will be done with the implementation of the new sports policy in near future.
The 10 districts whose sports have been changed include Mathura (wrestling instead of judo), Ballia, Ambedkar Nagar, Kanpur Dehat and Fatehpur (athletics instead of badminton), Bahraich (football instead of badminton), Shravasti (kabaddi instead of badminton), and Jhansi, Gonda and Lakhimpur Kheri (hockey instead of badminton).
Meanwhile, selection and training of sports talents is going on.
ODOS Scheme (sports & district):
Wrestling: Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Chandauli, Baghpat, Azamgarh, Deoria, Maharajganj.
Athletics: Mainpuri, Firozabad, Jaunpur, Bhadohi, Sambhal, Sitapur, Kasganj, Unnao, Ayodhya, Kaushambi, Etah, Amethi, Rampur, Siddharthnagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Chitrakoot, Basti, Hamirpur, Hapur, Meerut, Ghazipur, Shamli, Ballia and Muzaffarnagar.
Hockey: Pratapgarh, Mau, Bareilly, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Hardoi, Farrukhabad, Moradabad, Balrampur, Etawah and Ghaziabad.
Table Tennis: Agra, Kanpur Nagar.
Badminton: Aligarh and Gautam Buddha Nagar.
Weightlifting: Mirzapur and Bijnor.
Boxing: Bulandshahr and Kushinagar.
Archery: Sonbhadra and Lalitpur.
Football: Hathras.
Swimming: Pilibhit.
Shooting: Banda.
Kabaddi: Kannauj.
Lawn Tennis: Prayagraj.
Navneet Sehgal, Additional Chief Secretary (Sports), remarked: “There is a universal rule to nurture sporting talents -- catch them young. The department will ensure identification of the talents related to popular sports in different areas at the right age and provide them the best training possible at the district, state and national levels to enhance their performances. This is also the purpose of the ODOS scheme. It will be our endeavour that according to the intention of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in the coming few years, according to the population, Uttar Pradesh leads the country in sports.”
It is worth mentioning here that on January 24, 2018, on the first foundation day of Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi government launched the ODOP scheme. Its purpose was to give a new identity to the very rich traditional art, skill and cultural heritage of Uttar Pradesh and to create employment opportunities at the local level for the people associated with it. To make the scheme successful, the government paid attention to training, financing, technical support, designing and packaging of the products. As a result, ODOP is one of the most successful schemes of the Yogi government today. This initiative taken for Vocal for Local has now gone from local to global. Recently, Ambassador of Indonesia Ina H Krishnamurthy had met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and had told him about the implementation of ODOP in his own country.
