Guwahati, July 15: Chief minister Tarun Gogoi will lay the foundation stone for the construction of a state-of-the-art cricket stadium at the Barsapara ground here for the second time in little over two years on Thursday.

Gogoi had laid the foundation stone for the stadium in June 2005. He will now be the chief guest at a function marking the start of construction on Thursday.

Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India Niranjan R. Shah will attend the programme.

However, a source in the Assam Cricket Association said the chief minister’s presence on the occasion is uncertain because of the presidential election slated for that day.

Although the foundation of the stadium was laid in 2005 after the plot was allotted to the association, construction was delayed by over a year-and-a-half because of litigations to evict encroachers from the 58-bigha ground.

This is the third time that the city will witness the laying of a foundation stone for a cricket stadium.

In 1998, then chief minister and president of the association Prafulla Kumar Mahanta first laid a foundation stone in a 98-bigha plot in Hengerabari.

Setting a deadline for itself to complete construction of the stadium within 2009, the association has this time promised to finish the project.

“We propose to carry on construction till the stadium is ready for cricket provided the funds flow continues uninterrupted,” said secretary of the association Bikash Baruah.

The BCCI has so far promised Rs 10 crore while the state government has decided to allocate Rs 1 crore every fiscal for the construction of the Rs 50-crore stadium. Of the total amount sanctioned so far, the association has received Rs 5 crore.

The association has engaged Calcutta-based firm Lloyds Ltd as builder and Sashi Prabhu Associates of Mumbai as consultant architects.

The dearth of an alternative to the Nehru Stadium has been a perennial handicap for the association as well as the Guwahati Sports Association who often happen to be at loggerheads with each other owing to clash of schedules for different cricket and football activities.

The GSA, too, has entered into a joint venture with the Arya Vidyapeeth School to develop the latter’s ground but would need at least two more years to complete the work.

Organisers for sporting events here have started feeling that either the association or the GSA should move out of the Nehru Stadium as soon as possible. The association incurs a huge expenditure every year for maintenance of the Nehru Stadium.