Chief Minister Mr. Akhilesh Yadav distributed One Lac rupees to each player and 5 Lacs to the NGO. This is part of our initiative to promote sports in the state, Other steps we have taken are the construction of an international cricket stadium and a rural cricket league.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday said his government has been consistently promoting sports as a result of which sportsmen from the state were winning laurels at national and international levels.

Chief Minister was addressing a felicitation function of the state’s winning side in 13th Rajiv Gandhi Slum Soccer National Championship held in Nagpur last year.

He presented a cheque of Rs 1 lakh on behalf of the government and another of Rs 5 lakh from Tatva Foundation to each of the team members.

A football match between the national winners and CM-XI was organised.

His love for soccer is well known. On Sunday, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav showed that he is not just an armchair football buff, taking to the field on the lawns of his official residence for full 50 minutes and scoring a hat trick to take his side to a thrilling 5-4 win against a team comprising players from slums. He in fact was the only player from the CM XI who played the entire duration of the seven-a-side match.

Among other members of CM XI were IAS officers Parthsathy Sen Sharma as defender and Bhuvnesh Kumar and Raj Shekhar as mid-fielders. CM’s secretary, Amod Kumar, took the soccer field for the first time and walked away with the best debutant award along with Mainpuri MP Tej Pratap Yadav. Akhilesh’s daughter Tina, too, joined the team for a brief period to buck up her dad while wife and Kannauj MP Dimple Yadav cheered him from the stand.

“This is my favorite game and as a child have played on the La Martiniere ground, Dilkusha and Cantonment,” the chief minister said after the match organized by the Tatva Foundation. After the match, Akhilesh and Dimple presented 1 lakh to each member of the slum dwellers’ team and congratulated them for their victory in Nagpur.

“This is simply unimaginable. We played soccer match with the chief minister,” said a beaming Mohammad Atif, one of the rival players, echoing the sentiments of all the team members, who, probably for the first time, were happy even in defeat.






