Haryana announces a cash prize of a crore for Gagan Narang

A Crore for Narang’s bronze!

Chandigarh -  The Haryana government has announced a reward of Rs.One crore for shooter Gagan Narang as he won a bronze medal in the 10-metre Air Rifle event at the London Olympics on Monday. This is the first medal for India in the 2012 Games.

Even though Narang does not belong to Haryana,  he has been given the reward under the category of ‘sportspersons from the state’ as his family roots are from the northern state.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda announced the reward for Narang immediately after he won bronze in the shooting event.

Narang’s family had lived in Haryana’s Panipat town,  180 km from here, for decades before moving down south.

Hooda said Narang has brought laurels to the state and the country.

The chief minister has said that players from Haryana who win a gold medal in the Olympics would get Rs.2.5 crore, whereas silver medallists and bronze medallists would recieve Rs.1.5 crore and a crore repectively.

As the Haryana government doled out cash rewards, cars, mobiles and other goodies for medal-winning players from the state in the Common Wealth and Asian Games (2010),  Narang, who won four gold medals in shooting in Delhi,  walked away with a cash prize of Rs.37.5 lakh.

This was the highest prize money amongst all the 35 players honoured at that time.

Each CWG gold medal winner had recieved Rs.15 lakh from the Haryana government and those who won more than one gold got an additional Rs.7.5 lakh for each medal.

Narang and all the other gold medallists also got one Maruti SX-4 car (priced around Rs.8,00000), and a Nokia phone.