Sports Minister Ajay Maken has announced setting up of a coaching centre in Imphal and also sanctioned a football academy to Dimapur in Nagaland. He made these announcements today during a workshop on 'Youth and Sports development in North-Eastern region' in New Delhi. Addressing the issue of lack of quality coaches in various sporting disciplines in the North-East, Maken said the Imphal coaching institute would be catering to the needs of the North-Eastern states. Imphal would be the fourth coaching institute in the country after Patiala, Kolkata and Bangalore. Maken also decided to sanction a football academy to Nagaland in view of the poor infrastructure for sports in the North-Eastern states. The Minister assured that the other states of the region would also be allotted academies over the course of time. The Minister also informed that the next North East Youth Festival will be held in Shillong in Feb-March this year. The workshop saw ministers from all the north-eastern states — Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoran, Tripura and Nagaland — sharing their concerns and discussing problems to the growth of sports in the region.