Centre allocates ₹565 crore state component in revamped Khelo India sports infrastructure fund

New Delhi, August 06, 2026 — The central government has set aside a ₹565 crore component for states under the revamped Khelo India Scheme to help share the cost of sports infrastructure projects in the plan's five-year period, the Sports Ministry said. The announcement follows the union cabinet's approval of the new Khelo India outlay earlier this week.

The union cabinet approved a ₹29,054 crore outlay for the Khelo India Scheme alongside ₹7,387 crore for the Assistance to National Sports Federations Scheme (ANSF). The Sports Ministry specified the central share from the corpus as ₹28,489 crore and the state share as ₹565 crore, but did not provide the individual allocations for each state.

Under the revised funding pattern, infrastructure projects in general states will be funded on a 60:40 basis with the central government meeting 60% of costs. For the North-Eastern states (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura) and the Himalayan states (Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand) the central government will bear 90% of the cost, while infrastructure in Union Territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry) will be entirely funded by the Centre. "This demarcation was not there in the previous Khelo India Scheme and this has been done to make states a partner in the process and provide them ownership in the projects," a Sports Ministry source told PTI.

The new outlay represents an eightfold increase on the funds earmarked for the previous Khelo India Scheme, which had only central funding and no specific fund or role assigned to states. The Ministry presented the altered funding structure as part of the broader five-year plan for the scheme.

Currently, there are close to 3000 Khelo India Athletes across 22 sports, and the Sports Ministry said it hopes those numbers "would rise at least nine times creating adequate bench strength." The ministry linked the expanded athlete pool to the larger funding envelope under the revised scheme.

The Sports Ministry said ANSF will be used to support India's event-hosting ambitions and specific competitions, and listed multiple tournaments to be funded through ANSF. These include this month's Badminton World Championships in Delhi, the Asian Athletics Relays next year, the World Athletics Indoor Championship in 2028 and the World Police and Fire Games in 2029.

ANSF, which was launched in 2001 and functions as a supplemental support scheme for National Sports Federations, will also be used to prepare for the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad and to support India's bid for the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games.