From ₹800 crore to ₹4,497 crore — that is the arc BJP MP Anurag Thakur drew on Saturday, 26 September 2026, at an event in Nadaun, Himachal Pradesh, contrasting the sports budget under Congress-led governments with what the Modi government allocates today.

The numbers Thakur put on the table in Nadaun

Thakur, a BJP Lok Sabha MP from Hamirpur and former Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, cited the jump from the Congress-era ₹800 crore sports outlay to the current ₹4,497 crore — a near six-fold rise. More striking was the forward-looking figure he anchored the argument on: an allocation of ₹36,441 crore under the Khelo India scheme over the next five years, aimed at increasing athlete participation tenfold.

Khelo India, launched in 2017 as a flagship central scheme for grassroots sports, talent identification, and infrastructure development, has become the government's primary vehicle for that ambition. Thakur was its ministerial steward between 2021 and 2024, giving him particular standing to present these numbers.

Why the Congress-era comparison carries political weight

Comparisons between pre- and post-2014 sports spending are a recurring feature of the BJP's governance narrative. By anchoring the baseline at ₹800 crore — the level attributed to Indian National Congress governments — Thakur frames the current allocation not as incremental growth but as structural transformation. The backdrop of Nadaun, a constituency town in his home district of Hamirpur, gives the messaging a local resonance: Himachal Pradesh has produced several nationally recognised athletes, and sports spending is a tangible, if politically useful, metric for voters.

The Khelo India benchmark and what follows

The ₹36,441 crore five-year outlay, if deployed as announced, would dwarf previous multi-year sports commitments and signal a deliberate push to move India up global sporting rankings by widening the participation base rather than concentrating only on elite coaching. The scheme's architecture — regional games, university games, winter games, and athlete stipends — is designed precisely for that funnel effect: identify talent early, fund it consistently, and build the infrastructure at the district level that elite academies cannot reach.

The real test, as any sports-policy observer will note, is utilisation. Announced allocations and actual expenditure on the ground — new courts, trained coaches, functional Khelo India centres — are the numbers that will determine whether the tenfold participation target becomes a headline or a result.