Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif swapped the inauguration stage for the badminton court during her visit to Jhelum on Tuesday, picking up a racket and playing a brief game with young players after opening a newly built sports gymnasium in the city.
The chief minister was in the district to inaugurate a series of development projects, and the gymnasium was one of the stops on a packed schedule covering education, healthcare, transport and infrastructure. Shortly after cutting the ribbon on the new facility, she joined students and local players on the court, exchanging shots with the youngsters as other participants looked on. The session gave the players a chance to meet the chief minister away from the formalities of the ceremony, and a video of the game, shared on social media by PML-N MPA Hina Parvez Butt, quickly spread online.
The gymnasium is part of the Punjab government's drive to expand sports infrastructure and give young athletes better places to train. The facility is meant to encourage participation in sport and to provide local players with somewhere proper to practise and develop their skills, rather than the uneven grounds and borrowed spaces many of them have had to make do with. For a district town like Jhelum, a purpose-built indoor hall is a genuine addition, offering a court that can be used in the heat of summer and the fog of winter alike.
The badminton game came during a visit that was about far more than sport. Maryam Nawaz's day in Jhelum and Pind Dadan Khan included the inauguration of a cardiac catheterisation laboratory at the District Headquarters Hospital, a project that will spare heart patients in the district the long journey to Rawalpindi or Lahore for treatment. Her schedule also included the formal launch of e-buses for the city, a water and sanitation scheme, the beautification of the old tehsil road, and briefings on the Jalalpur irrigation project and the Lalla Jhelum dual carriageway.
At the school ceremony, the chief minister told students that laptops, phones and scholarships were their right and the reward for their own hard work. Laptops went to 115 students of the government university in Jhelum and 42 female students of the nursing college, while Honhaar scholarships worth approximately 2.5 million rupees were given to 109 students. She also announced that the Punjab government would distribute 100,000 scooties to students, with the first phase expected to begin in December, and advised the students to undergo proper driving training and wear helmets.
The day was not without controversy. Before the visit, the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education in Rawalpindi had postponed the Computer Science papers scheduled for November 10 to November 30, on the recommendation of the Jhelum deputy commissioner, who cited the arrangements being made for the chief minister's visit. Maryam Nawaz responded by removing the deputy commissioner, Mir Reza Ozgen, from his post, saying she had directed that her visits should not cause inconvenience to the public, particularly students, and she announced that the postponed examinations would be held as originally scheduled.
The gymnasium in Jhelum fits into a much larger sports programme that the Punjab government has been building over the past year. In December 2025 the chief minister announced a plan to build 300 grounds and sports complexes across the province, backed by a Sports Endowment Fund increased from 2 billion rupees to 4 billion rupees. The Khelta Punjab programme was launched to identify talent and encourage participation at the grassroots, and the province's performance at the 35th National Games, where Punjab won 126 medals after 37 years, was held up as evidence that the investment was already paying off.
Women's sport has been given particular attention. The Khelta Punjab Pink Games 2026, held at Punjab Stadium in Lahore, drew more than 3,000 female athletes from across the province, and the chief minister announced that the games would be expanded to the tehsil level and eventually to the union council level, with 20 million rupees in prize money. She has also announced Punjab's first Sports City, with a launch in 2027, and declared 2026 the Year of Youth.
The same week has shown the programme in action at the local level. In another Punjab town, a former waste dumping site at a grain market was converted into the Allama Iqbal Sports Arena, with floodlights for evening games, parking, washrooms and seating for families, and exhibition matches of cricket and badminton were organised to mark its opening on Allama Iqbal Day.
That is the real test for the Jhelum gymnasium, and for the 300 grounds and complexes promised across the province. A ribbon-cutting and a rally on the badminton court make for a good photograph, but the value of the building will be decided over the months ahead, by whether its doors stay open, whether its courts are maintained, and whether the young players who rallied with the chief minister on Tuesday are still playing there in a year's time.
