Olympic tennis medalist Leander Paes joined the BJP on Tuesday, starting a new foray in politics just days before the West Bengal elections.
The West Bengal-born tennis legend said he was inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision and aims to prioritize sports to empower youth.
“I want to focus on sports and youth. Our nation is a young nation; 74.5 million people are under the age of 26. The focus in the next 20 to 25 years should be on sports education, sports infrastructure, medicine and architecture,” he said.
Paes highlighted the dearth of sports facilities across India, noting that there is not a single indoor tennis court in the country, a glaring gap in a tropical country that experiences three to six months of rain and high temperatures annually.
“When I started playing in 1986 for Bengal, there were no clay courts… The infrastructure has improved, but Bengal can do better,” Paes said.
Paes won the bronze medal in men’s singles tennis at the Atlanta Olympics on 29 July 1996, ending India’s 44-year Olympic medal drought.
He credited Union Minister Kiren Rijiju for “inspiring” him to join the BJP to build sports infrastructure, while praising government initiatives like Khelo India to boost the sector.
Regarding geopolitical tensions in West Asia and the Ukrainian-Russian war, Paes said India is poised to emerge as a superpower (can we double check if he said this? Sounds strange).
