Union Minister for the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Shri Anurag Singh Thakur has launched revised cash reward, national welfare and pension schemes for sportsmen, a web portal for the programs of the Ministry of Sports (dbtyas-sports.gov.in) and National Sports Development Fund Website (nsdf.yas.gov.in) today in New Delhi.
Shri Anurag Thakur informed that the Ministry of Youth and Sports has made several significant changes to the cash award scheme for medal winners at international sporting events and their coaches, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay National Welfare for Sportspersons (PDUNWFS) and Pension to Meritorious Sportsperson Scheme of Department of Sports with a vision to make these programs more user friendly, easy to access and transparent.
The Union Minister hailed this development as another step towards digital India by empowering citizens and bridging the gap between government and citizens, system and facilities, problems and solutions, and by advancing the Prime Minister’s vision of minimum government and maximum governance. These revised regimes will bring more transparency and accountability to benefit athletes in record time, the Minister explained.
Shri Thakur pointed out that now any individual athlete can directly apply for the three programs based on their eligibility. “Previously, proposals were received through Sports Federations/SAIs, which took considerable time for proposal submission. Sometimes it took more than 1-2 years to approve the proposal. wanted and subsequent approval of the cash reward, the applicant must now apply online for the cash reward program within six months from the last closing date of the particular event,” he said. added.
The Union Minister further informed that the verification process in the three systems has been greatly simplified to reduce the processing time. To ensure coaches receive their cash reward in a timely manner, required changes have been made to the program. Retirement benefits have also been extended to Deaflympics athletes. “To implement the above features in these schemes, the Ministry of Sports has developed the web portal dbtyas-sports.gov.in to assist sports people to apply for benefits under the above schemes from the Ministry of Sports “, he added.
Shri Thakur said this online portal will facilitate athletes’ real-time tracking of applications and authentication via a one-time password (OTP) sent to their registered mobile phone number. The physical submission of applications by candidates to the ministry would no longer be required. The portal has also been integrated with DBT-MIS, which will enable the transfer of funds to athletes directly to their bank accounts to achieve the goals of the Government of India’s DBT mission.
The Union Minister further added that the portal will not only help the Department to quickly weed out all the applications within the given time frame but will also be used to generate different types of required reports and athlete data management. The online portal would be updated from time to time to meet the needs of athletes and common scenarios.
The Union Minister pointed out that the department has also developed a dedicated interactive website nsdf.yas.gov.in for the “National Sports Development Fund” (NSDF). This fund is based on CSR contributions from central and state governments, PSUs, private companies and individuals, etc. for the promotion and development of sport in the country. The Union Minister informed that individuals, institutions and businesses can now contribute directly to players, sports facilities and sporting events through the portal. The NSDF corpus is used for the Target Olympic Podium (TOP) program, infrastructure development by prominent athletes and sports organizations, etc. helped make the NSDF a great success for the development of the sport in the country,” he added.
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