The 10-day event will serve as a qualifying tournament for the National Shooting Championship to be held later this year. The city has a long standing association with this tournament. After the inaugural edition held here in 1991, the city played hosts again in '92, '94 and '96.

This time around the tournament has attracted 874 shooters from 35 teams. The different events in which competition will take place are - air rifle, pistol and .22 rifle. And the different categories in the men's and women's group are - open, junior and sub-junior. The air rifle and pistol competitions will be conducted in the standing position while the .22 rifle will be in the prone and the mixed-positions sections.

The largest squad here is from Maharashtra with 125 participants. An interesting situation has cropped in the sub-junior category. It has just one competitor, which happens to be from Gujarat. But with this being a qualifying event the one horse race will take place. Including her the state has a 38 member team.

Besides the various state and institutional teams, there will also be teams from the Army, Navy, BSF, BSF kids, CRPF, CISF and DG NCC. There is a minimum qualifying standard set participants in each category. For rifle shooting it is 90 per cent of the maximum possible for the seniors and 80 per cent for juniors. In the pistol shooting event it is 85 per cent and 80 per cent of seniors and juniors. The tournament will be held by national rules and not according to the international rules by which the National Shooting Championship is conducted.

The tournament will be inaugurated by Harin Pathak, Deputy Defence Ministry, on Thursday and the competitions will be held between 9.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. from Thursday. The first prize distributions will be held on October 26 and the final prize distribution on October 30.