New Delhi: The International Yoga Day celebrations at Rajpath set two Guinness World Records on Sunday.
The gathering at Rajpath, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, set record for 'Largest number of participants' at 35,985 and 'Most number of nationalities' at 84.
The PM himself tweeted this, and said, "35,985 people belonging to 84 nations joined the #YogaDay programme at Rajpath. 2 world records have been set. Yoga truly unites. (sic)
35,985 people belonging to 84 nations joined the #YogaDay programme at Rajpath. 2 world records have been set. Yoga truly unites.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 21, 2015
Confirming this, an official release by the Ministry of AYUSH said —
"The Ministry of AYUSH has been awarded with two Guinness World Records in two different categories on the first International Day of Yoga.
Category 1 was for the largest number of participants in a Yoga Lesson at single venue. The earlier record was of 29,973. To beat that record a target of 30,000 was required. The Ministry broke that record as 35,985 participants performed Yoga at Rajpath today morning.
Category 2 was most number of nationalists in a Yoga Lesson. To achieve this at least participants from 50 countries were required to perform. But today participants from 84 countries performed Yoga at Rajpath.
Shri Shripad Yesso Naik. MoS(I/C). Ministry of AYUSH and Secretary AYUSH received the awards which were presented by the representatives of Guinness World Records Ms Victoria from UK and Mr. Marco Frigatti from Italy.
Speaking on the occasion the Minister expressed his gratitude towards the officials of the Ministry for making the programme of Rajpath a great success and efforts made towards achieving two world records.
Also present on the occasion were Yog Gurus, Mr. Guru Malladi, coordinator of EY Company and senior officials of the Ministry. (sic)"
Rajpath - the ceremonial boulevard for march pasts and pomp and revellery on the Republic Day - on Sunday morning saw people taking part in synchronised yogic exercises and pranayams.
Students, government employees and citizens took up positions on neatly laid out mats to perform yoga for over 35 minutes. The "common yoga protocol" included various asanas as well as meditation.
Modi, who delivered a speech to mark the start of the event, later joined people on the Rajpath in performing yoga.
Ayush ministry officials said 37,000 mats had been laid out for people to participate in the yoga exercises at Rajpath in central Delhi and its adjoining areas.
The organisers had applied for a Guinness record for the largest simultaneous assembly of people at a yoga event.
The Guinness record was earlier held by Vivekananda Kendra which organised a yoga event in which 29,973 people participated in Gwalior on November 19, 2005.
(With Agency Inputs)
