Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has announced a whopping prize money for India's medal winners at the Hangzhou Asian Games to acknowledge their hard work and to encourage them moving forward. The honourable defence minister made the announcement while interacting with the Asian Games medal winners of India's armed forces on Tuesday, October 17.
As per the announcement, the Defence Ministry will honour the gold medal winners with a prize money of INR 25 lakhs, the silver medallists with INR 15 lakhs and the athletes who have claimed bronze with INR 10 lakhs.
"In this year's Asian Games, we have won a total of 107 medals. Last time, in the 2018 Asian Games, we had won 70 medals. If we look at this journey from 70 medals to 107 medals in terms of growth, we have seen an increase of about 50%...India has even reached the Moon. The biggest institutions of the world are accepting India's development. Be it World Bank or IMF, India's development journey is being discussed everywhere," said Singh during the interaction.
"This time, even before the Asian Games, our slogan regarding medals was, 'This time, 100 crosses'. And certainly, you have fulfilled our dream by working on the aspirations of 140 crore Indians, and today India has given its best-ever performance in this Asian Games and brought 107 medals," he added.
The 2022 Asian Games also witnessed India's dominance in a wide array of sports including cricket (men's and women's), and kabaddi (men's and women's) among others.
The women's cricket team won gold after defeating Sri Lanka in the final and the men's cricket team took a leaf out of their book to claim gold (based on their better T20I ranking) too after rain washed away the summit clash against Afghanistan.
In kabaddi, the Indian women's team got the better of Chinese Taipei to claim gold and the men's team pipped Iran to reclaim gold in a dramatic final.
