First statewide Andhra police sports meet opens with 1,900 personnel

Director General of Police Harish Kumar Gupta on 1 September 2026 inaugurated the four-day Andhra Pradesh State Police Sports and Games Meet–2026 at the APSP 6th Battalion in Mangalagiri, calling on the force to stay fit for better public service.

About 1,900 police personnel from across the State are competing—the first such statewide police meet, officials said. Sixteen teams, including ministerial staff and various ranges and units, are in the field. Inspector General of Police (Sports and Welfare) K.V. Mohana Rao said competitions would run at VIP-AP and Acharya Nagarjuna University grounds. Additional DGP (Law and Order) N. Madhusudhan Reddy, IGP (EAGLE) Ake Ravi Krishna, IGPs B. Raja Kumar and Ch. Srikanth, DIGs, SPs and other officers attended the inauguration.

Gupta advised officers to play sports regularly to relieve stress and maintain health—an institutional pitch that treats fitness as operational readiness, not optional recreation. Police sports meets elsewhere in India have long doubled as welfare calendars and informal networking across ranges; Andhra’s first statewide edition tries to build that culture after years of district-level and battalion-level events without a single state umbrella.

The participant scale—nearly two thousand personnel across sixteen teams—means logistics will matter as much as medals: ground allocation between VIP-AP and ANU, heat management in early September, and ensuring duty rosters still cover public order while athletes travel. For a force that spends long hours on election bands, law-and-order surges and coastal disaster duty, a four-day meet is also a rare scheduled pause.

The desk does not invent event-wise results that have not been published. What 1 September locks is the DGP inauguration at Mangalagiri, the first-statewide claim, the ~1,900 personnel and 16-team field, the two competition venues, and the fitness message from the top of the force. Building a statewide police meet from scratch means standardising age categories, events and unit quotas so a range team from Rayalaseema and a battalion team from coastal Andhra arrive under the same rules. Placing competition at both VIP-AP and Acharya Nagarjuna University grounds spreads load and gives athletics and team games parallel venues. For ministerial staff included among the sixteen teams, the meet is also a rare chance to share a field with uniformed units outside office corridors.

Gupta’s stress-and-fitness message lands in a force that has worked continuous election, SIR and law-and-order cycles. Four days will not fix occupational health, but a recurring state meet can make annual fitness measurable. Results will come as events finish; the inaugural day’s public facts are participation scale, venue split, first-edition status and the DGP’s charge to stay match-ready for the public.