The meet, jointly organised by the Karnataka Olympic Association and the Department of Youth Services and Sports, is being revived after a gap of four years and will see 24 disciplines with five events — football, volleyball, kabaddi, netball and kho-kho — is slated to commence here on Monday.

Unlike other disciplines, football will see a straight fight between District teams and the Bangalore District Football Association XI. The strong BDFA team, which has a couple of HASC players in its ranks, is pitted in Group A along with Shimoga, Mandya and Kodagu in the knockout fixture.

In the inaugural fixture at the PET College Football grounds, Mandya will take on Kodagu, while BDFA will lock horns with Shimoga, with the winners taking on each other in the quarterfinal stage.

Group B includes Dharwad, Belgaum, Dakshina Kannada and Kolar. All eyes will be on Kolar and its mercurial HASC striker Xavier Vijayakumar, a veteran of many battles.

An interesting tussle is on the cards in the men's volleyball where Super Division and State champions Karnataka State Police will fancy their chances after being pitted in a relatively easy pool which has South Western Railway, BSNL and Sports Hostel.

Super Division runners-up CIL, who will be hoping to set their record straight this time, are in Group B along with ITI, Postal Sports Club apart from hosts Mandya Sports Club.

KSP and Sports Hostel will square off in the opening match at the Vishweshwaraiah stadium, while CIL, who have a couple of junior internationals in the fray, will begin their campaign against Postal in the evening.

Tough fight
"The meet is likely to see close to 4000 participants," said DYSS Commissioner Amar Kumar Pandey. "Since the meet will serve as selection trials for the National Youth Games scheduled to be held in Bangalore in April, we expect the competition level to be high," he added.

Former minister and Mandya MP Ambarish will officially inaugurate the meet on Tuesday at the Vishweshwaraiah stadium.

 The meet was initially planned to be held in Raichur before being shifted to Mysore and Mandya due to lack of infrastructure.

The  athletics programme, the plum event of the meet, will commence from Wednesday at Mysore.