India's largest ever contingent gears up for 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio

Courtesy Twitter (‏@indiainbrazil)

Rio de Janerio: Represented by their largest-ever contingent, India will hope for an improved medals tally when the Paralympic Games start on Wednesday.

A total of 19 Indian athletes will feature in 10 disciplines at the Games which will be held September 7-18.

The Sports Ministry announced on Tuesday that the Indian gold medalists from the Paralympic Games will be awarded Rs 75 lakh, the silver medalists will get Rs 50 lakh while Rs 30 lakh will be given to the bronze medalists.

Among the Indian athletes, javelin thrower Devendra Jhajharia , who became India's first Paralympic gold medalist in Athens 2004, will be taking part in his fourth edition and will hope to finish on the podium this time as well.

The 2016 Paralympics will see as many as 4,300 athletes competing for medals in 23 disciplines.

Apart from archery, athletics, boccia, cycling, para canoe, equestrian, football (five-a-side, seven-a-side), goalball, judo, para-triathlon, powerlifting, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, volleyball, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair fencing, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair rugby, which featured in the previous edition as well, canoe-kayak and triathlon will make their debut at this year's Paralympics.

The 10 categories of impairment recognised by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) are impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision impairment and intellectual impairment.

India has so far won a total of eight medals at the Paralympic Games, including two golds, three silvers and three bronzes. Of these, one gold, three silver and two bronze medals have come in athletics while swimming and powerlifting have yielded a gold and a bronze respectively.

Indian squad:

Men: Mariyappan Thangavelu, Varun Singh Bhati, Sharad Kumar, Rampal Chahar (High jump), Sundar Singh Gurjar, Devendra Jhajaria, Rinku, Narender Ranbir, Sandeep (Javelin), Amit Kumar Saroha , Dharambir (Club throw), Naresh Kumar Sharma (Shooting), Suyash Narayan Jadhav (Swimming), Basha Farman (Powerlifting), Ankur Dhama (1,500m), Virender Dhanka (Javelin, Shotput).

Women: Pooja (Archery), Deepa Malik (Shot put), Karamjyoti Dalal (Discus).