Telangana, AP shower cash rewards on Sindhu, Gopichand

It's raining rewards for Hyderabad girl, P V Sindhu, who own silver medal in Rio Olympics in badminton on Friday.

Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (AP) governments on Saturday announced cash reward of Rs 5 crore and Rs 3 crore, respectively, to the Olympic medallist while congratulating her for winning the medal for India.

Both Telangana and AP governments have rewarded her coach Pullela Gopichand as well with a cash reward of Rs 1 crore and Rs 50 lakh, respectively, as the two sibling states competed in recognising the achievement of Sindhu and Gopichand through bigger cash rewards.

The AP Cabinet, which met on Saturday, also decided to offer a Group-A job to Sindhu, in addition to the cash reward of Rs 3 crore and this was announced by the state Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at a press briefing in Vijayawada in the evening.

Giving credit to his vision for sports in the earlier stint, Naidu said it was during his tenure as chief minister of the undivided AP in 2003 that Gopichand was given five acre land to start a badminton training academy in Hyderabad.

As he had encouraged the former All England Badminton champion to start the training academy that the training facility was established and now started producing the Olympic medallists, he said.

Within hours of AP's announcement of cash rewards for the player-coach duo, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao declared a cash reward of Rs 5 crore for Sindhu and Rs 1 crore for her coach, apparently in a gesture larger than that of his counter part in AP.

Rao also said that his state government will make arrangements to receive Sindhu and her coach with a hero's welcome once they fly back to the country from Rio.

The announcement of rewards for the badminton Olympic winner were not just confined to the two Telugu states.

Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal on Saturday announced a cash reward of Rs 50 lakh for Sindhu, as he declared cash rewards to the other players from India. Of course, the largest cash reward of Rs 2.5 crore was announced for bronze medal winner Sakhi Malik who is from Haryana. Under the Haryana government's policy, winner medal from Haryana in Olympics gets Rs 6 crore for gold, Rs 4 crore for silver and Rs 2.5 crore for bronze.

Meanwhile, Telugu film actor Vijaya Chandar said he was going to gift two acre farm land to Sindhu, as she had won the first Olympics silver medal in badminton for India.