New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha Thursday approved a bill to declare the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Sriperumbudur as an institution of national importance.
The Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development Bill, 2012, was passed by the house with a voice vote.
Replying to the debate on the bill, Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Ajay Maken said India was among the countries with a large young population. He said the institute would function as a repository of knowledge pertaining to data on youth.
Maken said best faculty will be inducted for the institute.
He invited suggestions from members to the draft national youth policy and said that definition of youth in the previous policy needed to be re-examined.
Participating in the debate, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said the bill aimed at building capacities of youth so that they play a more useful role in the process of nation building.
Aiyar, who termed the national sports policy evolved by the erstwhile National Democratic Alliance government as a "useless" document, faced protests from Bharatiya Janata Party members for his remarks.
"We are seeing the results of that cheap policy," Aiyar said and added that the "inadequate document had handed over control of sports bodies to non-athletic politicians".
He said the draft of new sports policy was lying in the ministry.
The bill seeks to evolve the institute as a centre of advanced study in the field of youth and achieve an integrated approach to youth development.
It will provide for higher education in the field of youth development through employment-oriented and inter-disciplinary courses at the post-graduate level.
The Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development was established at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1993 by the central government as a society under the Society Registration Act.
IANS
