Gujarat CM Rupani celebrates International Yoga Day with Ramdev, Amit Shah

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah along with yoga guru Ramdev and Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani led a crowd of thousands to perform yoga moves on the occasion of the International Yoga Day in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.

Baba Ramdev claimed that around 300,000 people had attended the event on Wednesday at Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) ground in the heart of the city and this event thus made its way into the Guinness World Records for the sheer turnout.

After the one-and-a-half hour long session, Ramdev claimed that the event has made it to the Guinness World Records book with nearly three lakh people performing yoga at one place. The previous record was made in Delhi on June 21, 2015, when 35,985 people did yoga at Rajpath with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Today is the most important day for me, as more than three lakh people performed yoga at one place to set a new world record. We have broken the previous world record, which was set in the presence of our prime minister, by a huge margin," Ramdev told reporters after the event.

He said officials of the Guinness World Records book were also present at the event, adding that the officials will declare the final figure of the participants after tabulating the data based on the bar code tag given to each person at the entry gates.

He advised the participants to follow the example of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah to practice yoga every day.

"Both Narendrabhai (Modi) and Amitbhai perform yoga every day without fail and everybody should follow them," he told a gathering of over a lakh people at the gathering. Many, however, stayed away from the mega event organised by the Gujarat government simultaneously at five grounds in the city, owing to a few spells of rains on Wednesday morning.

More than 10,000 volunteers from Patanjali Yogpeeth Gurukul were at the venue which had about 100 entry points and 100 giant screens to ensure smooth run of the event.

Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, former chief minister Anandiben Patel, several other political leaders, IPS and IAS officers, high court judges and dignitaries were also present at the venue at GMDC ground. This is the third edition of the International Yoga Day.

Shah, who performed some yoga postures and 'asanas' on the stage said, "Though India was trying hard to make yoga popular across the globe since 2011, we got success after the United Nations accepted Modiji's proposal in 2014 and declared June 21 as the World Yoga Day. Since then, the popularity of yoga is increasing across the world rapidly."

Apart from the GMDC ground, Yoga Day was celebrated at all the district headquarters by the Gujarat government. In Rajkot, as many as 792 women took part in an 'aqua yoga' event, wherein they performed asanas in different swimming pools, an official of the city civic body said.

Meanwhile, in Lucknow Modi-led a massive event attended by more than 50,000 people. In Delhi, Union ministers Venkaiah Naidu, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and NDA's presidential nominee Ram Nath Kovind took part in the celebrations in Connaught Place.