The Hindu : National : Young guns go great guns

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 01, 2004

National

National

Young guns go great guns

NEW DELHI, NOV. 30. Young Parliamentarians Naveen Jindal, Jyotiraditya Scindia and B.J. Panda stole the limelight at the inaugural Members of Parliament Sports Meet here today.

The Lok Sabha member from Haryana, Naveen Jindal, won the 10-metre Air Rifle competition as he hit 155 targets out of 200, followed by Mr. Scindia (118/200) and Dr. Prabha Thakur (76/200).

The Bharatiya Janata Dal Rajya Sabha member from Orissa, Mr. Panda, paired with the Congress MP, Suresh Pachouri, to win the table tennis event. They defeated R. Chandershekhar Reddy and Sharad Joshi.

The Union Minister, Oscar Fernandes, in the company of Narayanaswami, claimed the badminton doubles title.

Later at a prize distribution ceremony, the Parlimentary Affairs Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, announced that the sports meet for the Members of Parliament would be a regular feature of every session. His Ministry had short-listed 22 events for these meets.

The competition will be held every weekend during the session on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The competitions will have two or three events.

Mr. Azad said: "The idea behind holding these competitions is to help the members get over the tension. Members of Parliament, including the ministers, are always on tenterhooks. They are the most harassed people, they need to relax and this is one way to help them out." His Ministry had written to 800 MPs about this meet and about 25 per cent of them responded. "Today we had only three events and hence only those members came who were interested in these events," he said. "Today, it was a curtain raiser and I hope from next week onwards we will have more participants," he added.

The Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, who gave away the prizes hailed the idea of a sports meet. "It is good idea. The members are overworked; they also need to relax. These events will show that they are not always fighting or shouting," he said. "It is a wonderful way to bring the MPs together and I appeal to all members to take part in such activities."

The Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, the Youth Affairs and Sports Minister, Sunil Dutt, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, K. Rehman Khan, Kailash Joshi, Rajeev Shukla, Pawan Bansal and Lalit Suri were among those present at the meet.

UNI

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