Balangir: Members of the Balangir Swimmers' Association staged a demonstration in front of the collector's office on Tuesday to demand immediate steps to make a swimming pool in the town operational.

The association was protesting the district administration indifference towards the resolving the issue surrounding the swimming pool at the R.N. Singh Deo Sports Complex here. The pool was intended to encourage budding swimmers with ambitions to make a name in swimming. Named after former Odisha chief minister R.N. Singh Deo, the pool was dedicated to the people of Balangir by the BJD's Rajya Sabha MP A.U. Singh Deo and his son, Lok Sabha MP Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo, in October 2011. "The swimming pool was dedicated to the people of Balangir with so much fanfare, but it never saw the light of day. Seven years have passed and the pool is yet to become operational," said association secretary Sumit Ranjan Purohit.

The association members handed over a memorandum to additional district magistrate Laxmi Kant Pyarelal Pradhan. Two swimmers who have won medals in state-level championships also threatened to return their medals if the swimming pool was not made operational.

Sukanta Chhatria, one of the medallists, said without regular practice in a standard pool, it was not possible to be ready for events. "What use is my medal if I can't take part in big events?," he said. Purohit said the swimmers' body had earlier knocked on all possible doors to make the pool operational, but to no avail. "We have requested the A.U. Singh Deo, Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo, the district administration, sports and youth affairs minister and the sports secretary to resolve the issue, but it has not yielded any result," he said.

The association also approached then nodal officer in charge of Balangir and now the sports and youth affairs secretary, Vishal Dev, during his visit to Balangir in November 2017 about the pool. He had instructed the district administration to take immediate steps to make it operational. The pool was built for Rs 50 lakh, but the authorities have kept it locked up on the pretext of technical problems and non-availability of instructors, a source said.