The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Police – public sports event to start next month

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Police – public sports event to start next month

Staff Reporter

In order to build and foster cordial relationships

Sports festival will feature three games: handball, tug-of-war and kabbadi
Each team will include police personnel and members of the public

Coimbatore: The police in West Zone will be hosting a four-month-long sports festival involving police personnel and members of the public, to be inaugurated at the PRS Grounds in Coimbatore on September 1.

The Inspector-General of Police, West Zone, K. Rajendran and the Superintendent of Police, Coimbatore Rural District, G. Karthikeyan told reporters that the festival was aimed at fostering and nurturing a cordial relationship between the police personnel and the public as part of the Police Image Project.

The festival would have three games, namely handball, tug-of-war and kabbadi and the teams participating would be a mixture of police personnel and public.

The teams would be formed in such a way that the police and public would not form separate teams. Consequently, in every village team that would be formed, there would be representatives from the police.

The first round of games would be conducted in every police station level involving a minimum of eight and a maximum of 12 to 16 teams for each game and would be held within the station jurisdiction.

Efforts are being taken to ensure that all the 16,000 villages coming under the 277 police stations in 43 sub-divisions in all the seven districts take part in the festival in order to bring the police and the public closer together.

School headmasters, college principals, office bearers of Rotary and Lions clubs could be involved as chief guests at these sports events.

On condition was that games should be conducted only on Saturdays and Sundays and that too only when the police had no other pressing work or commitments that had to take priority from a professional standpoint.

Priority

School Physical Training Instructors and games teachers could be asked to officiate as umpires. In the event of pressing police work, the games would not be conducted for a brief period since the priority would be only hard-core policing, Mr.Rajendran pointed out.

Whenever the games were being conducted, either the Inspector or the Sub-Inspector should be present. The events should not involve any caste, community or political issues.

The police personnel have been instructed not to seek donations or contributions for conducting the games. The required funds could be met from the funds allocated to the districts or through sponsorships; not in the form of cash from schools, colleges, voluntary organisations.

The sponsorships should be only in the form of help or assistance and not cash in any manner. The prize distribution function would be held in January 2008.

At the inaugural function that was scheduled to be held on September 1, there would be a march past by teams comprising 100 police personnel and 100 members of the public.

In addition to this, there would be a colourful flag march by 6,000 students to be piloted by a 100-member band team.

There would be a band marching competition. Every participating school would be presented with a shield, certificate and trophy.

On the opening day there would be open-to-all cross country and relay running race.

Those interested in participating should approach the Sub-Inspector of Police or the Inspector of the jurisdiction station.

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