July 18: The Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Complex, which will host the swimming events of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, was inaugurated by sports minister M.S. Gill and Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit here on Sunday. The complex, which was constructed in 1982 for the Asian Games, has been upgraded at a cost of Rs 377 crores with state-of-the-art facilities. With a seating capacity of 5,000 spectators, the stadium has the largest cohestrand — a new technology for cable-supported bridges — elliptical shaped aluminium roof, said to be the first of its kind.
The complex is the largest covered aquatic stadium in the country having Olympic-sized swimming and diving pools with a six-lane warm-up pool. It is also equipped with basement-filtration plant and ozonisation plant with a pool water heating system.
The stadium is highlighted by green-building features such as thermal insulation in roof and walls, use of solar water heating, low energy glass for the facade to cut heat, dual knob flushing cisterns and ozone friendly refrigerants in its high efficiency HVAC system. Gill said that the weightlifting stadium and the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium would be ready in next few days and all the stadiums will be handed over to the Organising Committee by August 1.
Also present on the occasion were Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi, minister of state for sports and youth welfare Pratik Prakashbapu Patil and Sayan Chatterjee, director general Sports Authority of India.