Sachin Tendulkar to speak on 'Right to Play' and discuss future of sports in India in Rajya Sabha

Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, in his capacity as a Rajya Sabha member, has decided to raise the issue of “Right to Play” and the future of sports in India on 21 December in the upper house of Parliament.

Tendulkar, along with Ranvijay Singh Judev, BJP MP from Chattisgarh and PL Punia, MP from Congress, raised the issue on Wednesday. However, the question couldn’t be taken up for discussion during the day and it has been now scheduled for Thursday.

Tendulkar was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2012 by the then ruling Congress party and has since faced a lot of criticism for his long terms of absenteeism from the Parliament.

Earlier in August, Samajwadi Party MP had raised an issue of Tendulkar and actress Rekha having one of the worst attendance record, which prompted the Master Blaster to attend the following Rajya Sabha session resulting in a social media frenzy.

However, it has not been all bad for Tendulkar in his role as a MP.

Tendulkar’s favourite topic to pose questions in Rajya Sabha has been the Indian Railways. His first ever question as a member of the Parliament was on Kolkata Metro’s separate zone system and if it could be replicated in other cities.

After the recent tragedy at the Elphinstone Road station in Mumbai, it came to light that Tendulkar had, in 2016, asked the railway ministry about identifying high density stations with a single bridge in the city. He also questioned the ministry about its plans, if any, about constructing additional bridges for avoiding congestion during peak hours.

As a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, Tendulkar also used funds from the MP Local Area Development scheme to provide infrastructure development in the Andhra Pradesh village of Puttamraju Kandrika in 2014 under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana(SAGY).

Apart from Puttamraju Kandrika, Tendulkar adopted the village of Donja in Osmanabad district in Maharashtra in 2016.

On Tuesday, he visited Donja to oversee the development activities and took out time to play a game of cricket with the villagers.