No show for 2 years, PMC to now give sports scholarships worth Rs 20 lakh

An amount of 20 lakh will be given to candidates applying for the scholarship. While those applicants who have participated in inter-school or university level competitions will be given Rs 10,000 each; state-level sports applicants will get Rs 20,000; each and national-level applicants will be given Rs 30,000 each. The scholarship amount differs for those who play in the open category — Rs 20,000 per person for city/district level competitor; Rs 30,000 per person for state-level competitor; and Rs 50,000 for national/international level competitor.

Sheetal Sawant, president, PMC Sports Committee, said that in order to attract more applications from across the city, a small change has been made in the scholarship application. The earlier condition for the scholarship, which stated that “the annual income of parents of the student applying for scholarship should not be more than Rs 2.5 lakh, has been raised up to Rs 7 lakh per annum this year,” said Sawant. Therefore, in order to attract more applicants, PMC raised the income limit to Rs 7 lakh. “We realised that if the parents’ annual income will be Rs 2.5 lakh or lesser, they will not be able to indulge their children in any sport. How will they send them for district and state-level competitions? We wanted this scholarship to reach maximum students spread across the city. So we decided to increase the income level amount,” said Sawant.

Considering the importance sports is garnering across the country and the recent accomplishments of Indian sportswomen at Rio Olympics 2016, Puri added that PMC plans to increase the scholarship amount each passing year.