Kolkata may soon get one of the largest indoor sports arenas of the country with a capacity to accommodate up to 15,400 people.

With this capacity, the arena, which is proposed to come up in the New Town area, will be larger than Indira Gandhi Arena or Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi, which has a capacity to accommodate 14,348 spectators at one go, HIDCO Chairman Debashis Sen said. The capacity of the city’s Netaji Indoor stadium is 12,000.

Location

Keeping in mind West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Green City Project, the proposed stadium will have solar power and will come up on ten acres of land near the Deer Park in Eco Park.

The facility will have lawn tennis, ‘khokho khokho’, ’kabaddi’, badminton, basket ball and table tennis courts, Sen said.

“The project is in the planning stage. A design has been prepared as per instructions of the Chief Minister. The HIDCO Board has passed the design during its recently held meeting and now the design will be forwarded to the state government for approval,” he said.

The stadium will have four entrances for vehicles and four entrances for pedestrians with lifts to carry players and VIPs. There will also be two gymnasiums and changing rooms for players, Sen said, addingthat the area under the stadium will be rented out to various offices for commercial purposes.

Convention centre

New Town will also get a modern Biswa Bangla Convention Centre. Construction work has already started with a completion target of March 2017. HIDCO officials claimed the centre would be the largest convention centre in eastern India.

“The convention centre, as per our information, will be the largest convention centre of its kind in the country, with the main single conference hall having a capacity to accommodate 3,000 people,” Debashis Sen said.

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