City college struggles for sports ground

MUMBAI: Siddharth College at Fort, which will be conducting its annual sports festival next week, has not been given access to Mumbai University Sports Pavilion to carry out its festival. The ground falls under MU’s sports department. The college principal has alleged that the department has been allotting the ground to private schools and companies while ignoring MU-affiliated colleges, which have only two grounds for sports activities in the entire Mumbai region. Refuting the claim, the director of the department stated that the ground has already been booked for other events.

Principal of the aforementioned college, Umaji Maske, while talking to The Asian Age, alleged that the sports department is always up for renting the ground to private entities. “Since couple of years, they have been renting the ground to private school and company events but when it comes to their own colleges, they don’t have availability. We had requested the department for the availability of the ground for December 10 and 12 in the month of July this year. Even after making a request well in advance, they informed us that we cannot have it on those days,” said Mr Maske, who has been conducting the annual sports event since more than a decade.

“We are prepared for the sports festival. But now, we don’t have the ground and there is no other ground for us to conduct the event,” the principal added.

Apart from the Sports Pavilion at Churchgate, MU has another ground near Kalina campus. The colleges, who don’t have a ground in their campus, can avail the ground for conducting sports-related activities.