India scripts history; enters Guinness Book for yoga

The International Yoga Day event at Rajpath made it to the Guinness World Records Book, with 35,985 participants performing asanas at one venue and 84 nationalities being part of it.

"It is a matter of pride for India that we have broken two records on one day," Minister of AYUSH Shripad Naik told reporters here, citing the figures.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated all for the record set and successful conduct of the event.

The Rajpath event broke the earlier record set on November 19, 2005, when 29,973 students from 362 schools had performed a sequence of 'yogic kriyas' for surya namaskar simultaneously for 18 minutes led by Vivekananda Kendra at Jiwaji University Gwalior.

Ernst and Young audited the entire event, said Global head of records verification of Guinness World Records Marco Srigatti.

He said that for the first time, the minimum criteria set for any yoga event to enter the record books was participation of at least 50 nationalities.

The audit of the event revealed that 101 people attended the event but did not perform yoga.Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with officials of various ministries, school children, NCC cadets, Army personnel and officials performed yogasanas at the mega event at Rajpath.

The Ministry of AYUSH, the coordinating ministry, had set sights on registering the event in Guinness World Records Book for "largest yoga demonstration or class at a single venue and largest number of people of various nationalities performing yoga at one place".

Celebrations were held in the national capital after the United Nations had in December declared June 21 as International Yoga Day, with 177 countries voting in favour of the resolution.

The proposal had been mooted by the Prime Minister during his first address to the UN General Assembly in September last year.