Why in news?

• Uttar Pradesh’s Mohammed Rafey and West Bengal’s Prathista Samanta became the first gold medal winners of the Khelo India Youth Games 2019, emerging victorious in the men’s and women’s under-17 all-round artistic gymnastics events respectively in Pune
• Uttar Pradesh were dominant in the men’s category with gymnasts Rafey and Raj Yadav grabbing gold and silver with scores of 68.25 and 67.50 respectively.
• Delhi’s Tushar Kalyan clinched the bronze medal with an all-round score of 66.90. Tushar had won the bronze medal at the Khelo India School Games last year.
• Pratishta staved off a challenge from Maharashtra’s twin sisters Siddhi and Riddhi Hattekar to emerge on top in the women’s under-17 competition.It was her vault that helped to keep her nose ahead of the Aurangabad twins. She scored 13.00 on the vault to compensate for the uneven bars score of 7.10.

The results:

Men’s under-17 all-around: 1. Mohammed Rafey (Uttar Pradesh) 68.25 (floor 11.90, pommel horse 9.75, roman rings 11.05, vault 12.40, parallel bars 11.30, horizontal bar 11.85);

2. Raj Yadav (Uttar Pradesh) 67.50;
3. Tushar Kalyan (Delhi) 66.90.

Women’s under-17 all-around: 1. Pratishta Samanta (West Bengal) 42.05 (vault 13.00, uneven bars 7.10, beam 11.30, floor 10.65);

2. Siddhi Hatekar (Maharashtra) 40.85,
3. Riddhi Hattekar (Maharashtra) 40.45.

About Khelo India

• The Khelo India programme has been introduced to revive the sports culture in India at the grass-root level by building a strong framework for all sports played in our country and establish India as a great sporting nation.
• the use of latest user-friendly technology in all aspects of sports promotion such as, use of mobile apps for dissemination of sports training; National Sports Talent Search portal for talent identification; interactive website for indigenous sports; GIS based information system for locating and using sports infrastructure, etc.
• This programme strives to promote “Sports for All” as well as “Sports for Excellence. A program of central government for development of sports.
• Government has merged Rajiv Gandhi Khel Abhiyan (RGKA) with the Khelo India Programme.
• The RGKA was a centrally sponsored scheme launched by then Congress-led UPA government in 2014.