Government College of Health and Physical Education. Picture by Ashok Sinha

• National Sports Day, 2011 promise: Sports academy and astroturf hockey stadium

• National Sports Day, 2012 eve reality: Not a brick laid

Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s promised hockey stadium at Rajendra Nagar and an academy on the pattern of Netaji Institute of Sports in the state appear a distant dream a year after the announcements.

The state has sent a detailed project report (DPR) to the Centre for the hockey stadium on the Government College of Health and Physical Education campus at Rajendra Nagar. The Union ministry is yet to revert.

Nothing has moved on the sports academy front either.

Nitish had made the announcements last year on August 29 at Khel Samman Samaroh, hosted every year in the state on the National Sports Day. A year on, the chief minister would return to the sportspersons on Wednesday without much to show.

The department of art, culture and youths affairs, which handles sports, is planning a couple of more announcements besides felicitating sportspersons on the occasion this year. Besides Nitish, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and Sukhda Pandey, the minister for art culture and youths affairs, would attend the event.

Not many sportspersons are excited about the programme this year after the last year’s unfulfilled promise.

On Tuesday, The Telegraph found the Government College of Health and Physical Education campus ground covered with wild grasses. A junior employee of the institution said: “You can see the condition of the ground. After the last year’s announcement, the ground treatment started. But after some time, the work stopped.”

National Council for Teachers’ Education cancelled the affiliation of the state’s only physical education college in 2006.

Ram Japan Rai, the deputy director of the sports department, said: “The state government has submitted a DPR to the Union government for the construction of an astroturf hockey stadium on Government College of Health and Physical Education campus. But we have not received any reply from the Centre till now.”

On the status of the sports academy, Rai said: “There has been no progress in the project till now. We are going through the rules and regulations followed in other states to start sports academies.”