UP govt to honour Commonwealth Games medalists

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will honour eight sportspersons who have made the state and the country proud by winning medals at Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Wednesday.

Under a new sports policy, the government had recently announced that players who win medals at international events would be given due respect and position.

“The state government will honour the sportspersons of the state who participated in the CWG. As per the sports policy, the government will give jobs and additional benefits to those who won medals,” Adityanath tweeted in Hindi.

Under the new policy, a cash prize of Rs 1 crore would be given to the gold medalist, Rs 75 lakh to the silver medalist and Rs 50 lakh to the bronze medal winner, Additional Chief Secretary Navneet Sehgal said, adding all the medalists will also get the rank of a gazetted officer.

The felicitation ceremony is likely to be held in the first week of September, Sehgal said.

Those from Uttar Pradesh winning medals in the Commonwealth Games are Priyanka Goswami who won a silver medal in a 10-kilometer walk, Deepti Sharma of Meerut, and Meghna Singh of Bijnor as well as Lalit Upadhyay of Varanasi who bagged silver medals in women’s cricket and hockey, respectively.

Similarly, Vijay Kumar Yadav of Varanasi, Divya Kakran of Muzaffarnagar, Annu Rani of Meerut, and Vandana Kataria have bagged bronze medals for the country in judo, wrestling, javelin throw, and women’s hockey, respectively.

Besides eight medalists, five other players from Uttar Pradesh will get Rs 5 lakh each from the government for participation in the Commonwealth Games, Sehgal said.

The five sportspersons are Meeruts’s Seema Poonia (discus throw), Varanasi’s weightlifters Poonam Yadav and Poornima Yadav, Jaunpur’s Rohit Yadav (javelin throw), and Sambhal’s Sarita Yadav (hammer throw), he said.

The 2022 Commonwealth Games were held in Birmingham, England from July 28 to August 8.