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| Chief minister Tarun Gogoi unveils the foundation stone for the cricket stadium at Barsapara ground on Sunday. Picture by Biju Boro |
Guwahati, June 13: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi today laid the foundation stone of the Assam Cricket Association (ACA)’s cricket stadium at the Barsapara ground here.
Laying the stone, the chief minister said the state government had allotted the 59-bigha plot to the ACA to build a stadium. He promised that the state government would provide all possible help for the construction of the stadium.
Gogoi had given his consent to the allotment of the ground to the ACA during the prize-distribution ceremony of the New-Zealand-Australia one-day international at Nehru Stadium here on November 9.
The ACA has decided to build a state-of-the-art cricket stadium with all necessary facilities on the ground. It has sought the report for the Rs 25-crore Agartala cricket stadium from Tripura and proposes to build its stadium in a similar fashion.
According to the ACA plan, the stadium will be constructed in a phased manner. In the first phase, the ground will be developed and a pavilion and few galleries erected for holding inter-district and junior national-level tournaments.
Leading construction firms like Nagarjuna Constructions Limited and Gherji Eastern Limited of Calcutta have contacted the ACA to bid for the construction.
Addressing the huge gathering, ACA president Gautam Roy, who is also the social welfare minister, and secretary Bikash Baruah urged Gogoi to expedite the process of evicting encroachers from the ground.
More than half the ground has been encroached upon on all sides because it had remained unattended since it had been handed over to the SOS Village for the construction of a football stadium with Fifa funds.
Both Roy and Baruah appealed to the settlers to vacate the ground for the sake of cricket in the state. Roy promised alternative arrangements for those settlers, who were allotted land on the ground by the Hiteswar Saikia government in the early nineties.
Baruah admitted that the ACA had only, so far, possessed only 20 bighas of the land.
The ACA secretary said that in the absence of an exclusive cricket stadium for the cricket organisation, the latter had to face a lot of inconvenience. He hoped that the new stadium would be able to cater to its needs from time to time.
ACA vice-president and state transports minister Anjan Dutta, MLA Hemanta Talukdar and others attended the foundation stone-laying ceremony.