Guwahati, Sept. 25: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has sanctioned a grant worth Rs 3.48 crore to the Assam Cricket Association (ACA) to construct a cricket stadium here.

The decision was taken at the two-day BCCI annual general meeting that was adjourned midway in Calcutta on Friday.

?The board has approved a grant of Rs 3.48 crore for the stadium at Barsapara ground in Guwahati,? ACA secretary Bikash Baruah told The Telegraph from Calcutta.

The grant was in addition to an amount of Rs 4 crore promised by former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya to ACA president Gautam Roy earlier this year.

The ACA has acquired a 57-bigha plot at the Barsapara ground on the city outskirts for the stadium. Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi has pro-mised annual aid of Rs 1 crore for the stadium?s construction. This year?s instalment has already been released.

However, construction at the site had to be stopped following initial ground development after suits were filed by a section of encroachers in Gauhati High Court.

Earlier, the ACA took the help of the court and the district administration to evict encroachers from the ground, which had been initially allotted to the SOS Villages here for constructing a football stadium with FIFA funds.

The ACA?s second wish for a permanent National Cricket Academy (NCA) camp in Assam will have to wait for two more months till the BCCI AGM is held again. ?Our request for an NCA permanent camp in Assam was placed last on the agenda for discussion. But the BCCI meeting did not last till that. The matter will come up for discussion at the next sitting,? Baruah said.

In July last year, the ACA had moved the BCCI for an NCA camp. It had argued that a separate camp for the northeastern states could be set up in Assam so that the respective state associations could save time and money spent on sending players to camps in Calcutta and Bangalore.

Assam, Tripura, Sikkim and Manipur are the four states which have BCCI-affiliated units. Shillong is also affiliated to the ACA. The ACA has identified infrastructure in Nagaon, Jorhat, NF Railway, Silchar and Dibrugarh for setting up the camp.