Owning stadiums, meaning business

The left rule of 3 decades has ensured that powerful ministers and leaders of the main ruling party have come to ‘own’ lucrative public properties, notably stadiums.

Close to where I stay is the Jadavpur Stadium, a sprawling but unkempt campus, which I’m told ‘belongs’ to Sunderbans minister, Kanti Ganguly. What this means is no major functions can take place there without his ‘consent’.

I go to Jadavpur Stadium – referred as Kishore Bharati Krirangan when spoken about in gatherings – each morning to stretch my limbs, and I’ve to say that despite a nice built-up area and enough space, the stadium wears a sorry look. One glance, and you’ll know no effort is taken for its care. Who’d say once IFA’s premier league matches used to be played here!

But Jadavpur Stadium pales in size, name and fame when compared to Salt Lake Stadium (let’s call it SLS), aka Yuva Bharati Krirangan (যুব ভারতী ক্রীড়াঙ্গন). SLS is a giant, seats a lakh spectators, and has a surrounding area that can easily accommodate a mini township.

But for all its glamour and size, SLS is poorly managed, but at least games are played there. Among other events, Kolkata football matches are played inside its precinct, while its outside hosts major fairs (for example, Kolkata Book Fair is currently on there). SLS is ‘owned’, sorry looked after by the powerful Sports minister, Subhas Chakraborty.

One remembers Subhas’ call for blood (much along the line of Netaji’s call for blood for freedom of motherland) in perhaps 80s’ to be donated to raise money for building the stadium. His immature thinking meant that huge quantity of blood had to waste in absence of proper mechanism for storage. [Picture of SLS above source]

His immaturity kept pace with his strange ways of raising money for the stadium, including holding till recently all-night gala events there with Bollywood stars, digging holes in the ground to hold stages. He did all that, but one feels he could have done better by handing over the stadium to professionals, who have experience to look after it. He didn’t, and perhaps for that, loosing ‘control’ over the stadium if he did so was and still is the reason.

Meanwhile, even as the CM has come to ‘own’ Eden Gardens through his proxy, the city police chief, another heavyweight, the urban development minister Ashok Bhattacharya has stolen a march over all of them.

The Rajdanga playing ground, adjacent to Siemens’ complex on Rashbehari Avenue -Bypass connector, a property of KMDA of which Bhattacharya is the chairman, will see a major facelift.

To be launched tomorrow (Feb 22), Rajdanga Sports Complex, as it’ll come to be known in future, will be a Rs.200 crore mixed-project affair to be developed by city-based realtors, Merlin, that will have 750,000 sq ft tower, Acropolis, as well as a 4000-seater multi-discipline sports stadium, that will be transferred to KMDA after being built. See this TT story.

Clearly, Ashok Bhattacharya has shown the path as to how sports complex can be brought in the realm of creating wealth and making money for self-sustaining. Will the same happen to other sports stadiums in the city and elsewhere in the state? Only time will tell.