IIT Kharagpur, 15th December: IIT Kharagpur flagged off its 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet on 14th December 2019. The nine-day event is co-hosted by IIT Bhubaneswar with more than 2600 students participating from 23 IITs.
The mega event held at IIT KGP is witnessing tough competition across eight games – Athletics, Basketball, Chess, Cricket, Football, Hockey, Lawn Tennis and Weightlifting while IIT Bhubaneswar is hosting four events – Volleyball, Badminton, Table Tennis and Squash. Tyra, the Royal Bengal Tigress is the mascot for the 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet 2019.
Prof Sriman Kumar Bhattacharya, Director, IIT Kharagpur and Chief Patron of the 54th Inter IIT Sports Meet remarked on Brand IIT’s achievement in both academics and all-round ability of the students in diverse aspects and areas that sets IITs apart from other institutes. Students are the brand ambassadors and the onus is on them to keep their brand name high, he said.
12 distinguished sportspersons from KGP campus, took to lighting the torch for the ceremony. Former Skipper of Indian Women’s Cricket Team, Jhulan Goswami sent across her best wishes to the participants via voice message, saying, “I would like to congratulate all the participants who have come here today, and are going to perform. I extend my best wishes to you all, and once again, from the bottom of my heart. I shall come next time and spend some quality time with you people.” The event will be graced by sports stars like former cricket captains Kapil Dev and Sourav Ganguly, swimming champion Bula Choudhary and para swimmer Prasanta Karmakar among others.
Inter IIT Sports Meet started in 1961 with IIT Bombay as the first host. With the increasing number of participants, the number of disciplines in the games have also increased over the years. This year, chess has been added as a competitive event. Squash for girls has also been added as a demo event.
IIT Kharagpur has completely renovated its Sports Facilities. A new synthetic track has been built at the Jnan Ghosh Stadium. New floodlights have been also installed both at the Stadium and the Tata Steel Sports Complex. The tennis and basketball courts have been given an all-new look.
The competition has started taking shape right from day one with the march past following the flag hoisting ceremony. IIT-ISM Dhanbad secured first place in the event. Prof Rajeev Shekhar, Director, IIT-ISM Dhanbad, hoped the participants would compete with the never-dying fighting spirit.
The opening ceremony was celebrated by several professional performances including rhythmic yoga performance by Majida Khatun, second runners-up for Rhythmic Yoga at the Under-17 category for 2019 National School Games, football juggling by Amit Biswas, a young football juggler, with speech and hearing impairment and a medley of folk songs and dances across all states of India, ending with the anthem of Atletico-De-Kolkata.
Pictures – Click KGP, Inter IIT Sports Meet Facebook Page