NEW DELHI: India’s proud para athletes, who returned to the country after a historic show at the Paris Paralympics, were on Tuesday felicitated by sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who presented cash awards to medal winners for their remarkable performances.
Mandaviya presented a cheque of Rs 75 lakh to gold medallists, Rs 50 lakh to silver winners and Rs 30 lakh to athletes who bagged bronze. The participants in mixed team events, such as armless archer Sheetal Devi and Rakesh Kumar, who won bronze in the compound archery event, got richer by Rs 22.5 lakh each.
“The country is rising in Paralympics and para sports. From four medals in 2016, India won 19 medals in Tokyo and 29 in Paris with 18th place finish. We will provide all the facilities to our para-athletes so that India can win more medals at the Los Angeles Paralympics 2028,” Mandaviya said in his address.
“You have brought laurels for the country. You have shown that you can successfully challenge the difficulties in life. But you should not stop now. We should start preparations for the next Paralympics and then for 2032 and win more and more medals. Our target should be to produce our best performance when India hopefully hosts the Olympics and Paralympics in 2036,” he added.
The function was attended by minister of state for youth affairs sports, Raksha Khadse, and Paralympics Committee of India (PCI) president Devendra Jhajharia. India concluded their Paris campaign with 29 medals, including seven gold, nine silver and 13 bronze.
The 17 medallists who were given cheque on Tuesday: Navdeep Singh, Dharambir, Harwinder Singh, Sumit Antil and Praveen Kumar (gold medallists); Yogesh Kathuniya, Nishad Kumar, Sharad Kumar, Ajeet Singh and Sachin Khilari (silver medallists); Preeti Pal, Mariyappan Thangavelu, Hokato Sema, Sundar Singh Gurjar, Sheetal Devi, Kapil Parmar and Simran Sharma (bronze medallists).
