Budget 2025: Khelo India Gets ₹1,000 Crore Boost

The Khelo India scheme is a scheme for grassroots sports development and to build a formidable sporting culture in India. For the financial year 2025-26, the program has been given a grant of ₹1,000 crore. The Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, made this announcement on February 1 while presenting the Union Budget 2025-26.

This comes under the overall vision of the government in making India a great sporting nation and motivating youth talent with better infrastructure and training facilities.

The amount has been increased to ₹900 crore for 2024-25. This infers a commitment of the government in investing in the development of sports and nurturing the future athletes. These would be spent on increasing the training programs, better sports facilities along with fundings to young sportsmen in various disciplines.

Khelo India brought into prominence several budding sportsmen who, under proper guidance and support, went on to bring national as well as international glory. This has been the greatest thrust by the Indian sporting sector towards developing the athlete for match-ups at world levels as well as at Olympics and Asian Games.

This also finds resonance in the vision of having healthy and sporty youth which can bring in a country with a good deal of much more active youth through sports and fitness initiatives. This then puts forward the long-term commitment of the government to sports development and repute in the international sports landscape.