South Asian Games to be held in Nepal in December

KARACHI: The 13th South Asian Games will be held in Nepal from December 1-10, 2019, it was confirmed at the South Asian Olympic Council Executive Board meeting in Bangkok on Friday.

Nepal Olympic Committee’s president and renowned politician Jeevan Ram Shrestha chaired the meeting.The meeting was attended by Pakistan Olympic Association’s (POA) senior official Mohammad Shafiq.The POA chief Lt Gen (retd) Arif Hasan and secretary Khalid Mehmood could not reach Bangkok because of unavailability of flights owing to political tension between Pakistan and India.

Both the senior officials along with Shafiq are also to attend the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) General Assembly meeting in Bangkok on Sunday (tomorrow). Arif, who is also the OCA vice-president, also has to attend the OCA Executive Board meeting on Saturday (today).

India did not attend the meeting of the SAOC Executive Board.It was learnt that this would be the last opportunity for Nepal to host the biennial event. If Nepal this time also failed to host it, it would lose the hosting rights.

Nepal informed the participating nations that its venues were ready and that its government was eager to host the eight-nation competition. A question of cold weather was also raised during the meeting but those who raised objection over the new schedule were told that the temperature in Guwahati, India, was also very low during the 12th South Asian Games hosted by India in 2016.

Shillong, capital of Meghalaya, was the other host city. Nepal was supposed to host the Games in March 2019 but they were postponed at a meeting in Tokyo last year because of venues issue.