Workers give finishing touches to the stadium in Jamshedpur on Thursday. (Bhola Prasad)

Healthy body, healthy mind is Jamshedpur Women’s College’s new mantra.

The leading college, under Kolhan University, is all set to give sports activities for women a boost in the city courtesy an indoor stadium that is up and ready for inauguration.

The institution is incidentally the first college to have an indoor facility in the state. It has come up at an estimated cost of Rs 76 lakh and is likely to be inaugurated by Governor Syed Ahmed on April 9.

The aim, college authorities claim, is to motivate young girls to take up sports as a career as well as to promote various sporting discipline among women.

College officials said that the plan for setting up an indoor stadium was mooted and sent to the University Grants Commission (UGC) way back in 2009, with the college, receiving the nod of the apex body a year later. UGC then released around Rs 70 lakh to the college under sports infrastructure grant in 2010, after which the construction work was commenced on the college campus.

The entire structure, which has a seating capacity of 300, besides a green room and number of toilets, was built by Ranchi-based Gautam Constructions.

“Earlier, for all the indoor gaming events organised, we had to turn to JRD Tata Sports Complex, which was one of the few available options for us in the city. However, everything comes at a cost and hiring the sports complex every time was not feasible for us either. Hence, we came up with the idea of building our own indoor stadium,” said Shukla Mahanty, principal of Jamshedpur Women’s College.

She added that the new indoor stadium has facilities to play table tennis and badminton and would also stock up on carrom boards and other indoor board games.

“The funds were a one-time sports infrastructure grant under the UGC that we had applied for. Though, there are provisions for a number of grants under the apex body for development of infrastructure of various colleges, most of the institutions do not avail them. With the new stadium ready, we hope to regularise sports activities on our campus now,” Mahanty said.

Jamshedpur Women’s College has bagged an A-grade from Bangalore’s by National Assessment and Accreditation Council. Apart from this, the college is one of the two cradles from the city to have bagged the “College with potential for excellence” tag from the UGC.

The college has also applied to the International Accreditation Organisation, for an accreditation, for which it received received the certificate of candidacy in December last year.

“Education is about the all round development of an individual. It is good that the girls of the city from now on can take part in sporting activities regularly thanks to the new facility,” said Geeta Hansda, a second year student of psychology of the college.