Khelo India Youth Games


Khelo India Youth Games, formerly Khelo India School Games, means Play India Youth Games, held annually in January or February, are the national level multidisciplinary grassroot games in India held for two categories, namely under-17 years school students and under-21 college students. Every year best 1000 kids will be given an annual scholarship of for 8 years to prepare them for the international sporting events.
The Training of Trainers Programme will be held in December 2018- January 2019 in the first phase. Here total of 160 trainers will be trained in 4 batches of 40 each in December-January period. This TOT Programme will be carried out semi-annually or quarterly to include all the interested teachers, principals, vice-principals and physical education trainers.
Haryana which is considered a sports powerhouse was the top team in 2018, followed by Maharashtra and Delhi.

History

On 31 January 2018, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated Khelo India School Games at the opening ceremony based on Guru–shishya tradition held at Indira Gandhi Arena. from the 2019 events, Khelo India School Games were renamed to Khelo India Youth Games after Indian Olympic Association came on board earlier in September 2018.. The second edition of the event was kicked off in Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, a sports complex situated in Balewadi, Pune, by Sports Minister, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, and, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis.
On February 27, 2019, PM Narendra Modi launched the Khelo India App at the Youth Indian Parliament in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi to promote sports and fitness.
On 22 February 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first edition of the Khelo India University Games in Cuttack to give athletes the exposure of multi-disciplinary events at the university level.

Games and Medals

The inaugural 2018 games had students competing for 209 gold medals across 16 sports.
Badminton, basketball, boxing, gymnastics, judo, kabaddi, volleyball and wrestling were held at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium Complex. Athletics, football, kho kho and weightlifting were held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Swimming at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Swimming Complex, hockey at the Dhyan Chand National Stadium and shooting at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range were other venues.

Execution

Selection criteria

Only selected school kids below the age of 17 years are eligible to compete. In the individual sports, top 8 sportsperson from the School Games Federation of India's National School Games, 4 nominations from federation, one from Central Board of Secondary Education, one from the host State and 2 wild card entries for the individual events will be selected. In team sports, the top 4 from the National School Games, 2 nominations by the federation, 1 from the host State and one from the organising committee will be selected. For archery, badminton and shooting, the top 16 from the National School Games, 8 nominations by the federation, 1 from CBSE, 1 from host State, 1 from organising committee, and 6 from wild cards will be selected.

Talent hunt and scholarship

To identify the talent at grassroot level, each sports has a dedicated talent hunt committee, who will identify top 2 sportsperson for each sports and they will be given an annual scholarship of INR500,000 for 8 years.

Edition-wise Medal Tally