Rahul visit leaves players roomless at Balewadi

While the local Congress party workers were busy in welcoming their party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, the shooters, who arrived in the city for national-level shooting championship organised by Olympian Gagan Narang’s Gun For Glory Academy at Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex in Balewadi, were kept waiting outside their allotted hostel rooms on Wednesday.

“We were supposed to arrive in Pune on Tuesday but were told that the hostel rooms were occupied by Congress workers. We postponed our programme by a day. However, even on Wednesday, nobody was willing to vacate the rooms and we had to wait for several hours,” said a shooter requesting anonymity.

More than 1,500 shooters from across the country are participating in the championship. Teams from Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Nashik and Aurangabad have taken accommodation in the hostel of the sports complex while other shooters are believed to be staying in hotels.

Shooters were forced to walk a few kilometres as all roads and entries to the venue were blocked for security reasons. “Most of the shooters came by auto but on finding that the rooms were occupied, they were left without no option but to wait. In this area, there is hardly any hotel that we can afford. All the hotels we enquired were quoting room charges of more than Rs3,000 per day, while the Balewadi hostel room is available for Rs800 for two persons. Naturally, most of us preferred to wait here till evening,” a shooter said.

Unfortunately, the wait not only hampered the players’ morale but also forced them to miss the training sessions as they were busy in guarding their luggage outside the hostel wing.

“At least one training session is necessary as we will have our qualification rounds tomorrow. Luckily, we got the rooms by late afternoon but several others had to wait till late evening. Some sportspersons, who rented rooms in cheaper hotels located far off from the city, will move in by tomorrow,” a shooter said.

Some players who had arrived at the hostel as early as 7 am were forced to wait till evening to get accommodation.
Admitting that he is clueless about this chaos, Gun For Glory Academy director Pawan Singh said, “Shooters make arrangements for their accommodation on their own. Some of them have booked rooms in nearby hotels, while some in hostels. So far, we haven’t received any complaint regarding their accommodation.”

Alongside this shooting championship, Gagan Narang Sports Promotion Foundation will also be hosting the All India inter-school shooting championship that will see around 650 children from some of the best schools in the country taking part.

Students forced to stand for 4 hrs to welcome Rahul
Around 200 students of standard VIII, IX and X of Vidyabharti School in Tingarenagar were allegedly made to stand at Five-Nine Chowk area near the Pune airport to welcome Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday. Shiv Sena alleged that these children were made to stand from 5 pm to 9 pm and were not provided food and water.